


_Perfect Play

by glenarvon



Series: _Brilliancy [28]
Category: Watch Dogs (Video Games)
Genre: Blood and Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Manipulation, Organized Crime, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-29
Updated: 2017-05-13
Packaged: 2018-09-13 04:29:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 61,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9106660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glenarvon/pseuds/glenarvon
Summary: Chicago's underworld is a non-perfect information game.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning:** Cliffhanger.
> 
> **NOTE:** Due to the complexity of the plot and number of original characters, it is suggested that you read Femme Fatale first. Nevertheless...
> 
> **Recap:** In the events of Femme Fatale Aiden tried to dismantle the Chicago South Club by forcing its de-facto leader, Heather Quinn, to turn crown witness. However, Heather manipulated Aiden into killing her husband and thus allowing her to fully take over the Club. She tried to recruit Aiden and when it didn't work, abducted and tortured him. Aiden was rescued by Jordi and his protégé, Mia Perez.
> 
> **Other Recurring/Notable Characters:**
> 
> Kenneth Quinn: Heather's husband and Lucky's second son
> 
> Carl Herrick: former spec ops agent, running the muscle for the Club
> 
> Iain Darcy: Heather's secretary and lover

[takes place in march 2019]

* * *

Heather was the motionless heart of the hurricane while security cleared the terrace of the Merlaut. The fire-alarm howled behind her, loud and biting, tinnitus right inside her head. From the distance, she heard the sirens from the cops and the firefighters, but for the moment, the terrace became deserted, preternaturally quiet despite the racket just out of reach.

"Mrs Quinn?" someone asked, voice she recognised, one of the Club enforcers she'd ordered to bolster security for the duration of the clean energy conference held in her hotel. They weren't supposed to be up here, they were detailed to keep an eye on the garage and basement storage rooms, away from the guests and the press.

She held out a hand at the enforcer without looking at him. He had enough sense not to question her, he hesitated but then drew back. She even caught his questioning look at the man sitting calmly in an alcove by the balustrade.

As the enforcer lingered by the door, watching over Heather as she walked across the empty terrace, using the moment it took to reach him to assemble the pieces.

It had been over a year since EADA Ramsey had set out on his witch-hunt for her, egged on by Aiden Pearce himself. Ramsey had arrested her, had put her on trial and tried to get her behind bars with everything he'd discovered — or made to discover — but while the trial had been a mess, the evidence hadn't been enough to convict and she'd walked, as she'd always known she would. The damage to her organisation and her public image was much harder to repair.

Ramsey and Pearce had punched holes in every branch of her business, girls, drugs, art, whatever she was dealing in, it had all been dragged into the open. The gangs were fighting each other harder than ever, while also trying to nibble away at her territory. At least they weren't organised in the way they had been under the joint rule of Lucky Quinn and Iraq, giving her enough room to manoeuvre and secure her borders.

For the legal businesses, associating with her had been poison, but one carefully orchestrated step at a time, the trial and the dirty laundry it had aired dropped away into the past. She still had money and reach, and gradually, she'd taken back control of her own brand.

She'd had to lobby long and hard until she'd got a prestigious clean energy conference into one of her hotels. Clean energy was the latest trend, pushed for by Blume and backed by city officials who much preferred Chicago making headlines about its technological advancement over its crime statistics. The latest push was to replace combustion engine cars with electric ones all across the city, something Blume was only too happy about, considering that in their mind, electric and cars self-driving on their software was almost the same thing.

It was the perfect opportunity to attach her name to positive developments, hosting world-renowned scientists and their projects for a Utopia.

Only now, it turned out it had fallen through under a bomb threat on the evening of its opening gala. Fixing this would take even more than it already had, money being the least of her problems. But it could wait, it was too early to decide on a strategy, before she even new the first details of what had happened.

She stopped for a moment, eyes narrowed, then sat down in a chair uninvited.

"What do you think I should say?" she asked. " _You aren't on the guest list?_ Or perhaps I should compliment you, _you clean up nicely, Mr. Pearce."_

"I'm not here for you," Pearce said. His phone rested on his knee, display brightly lit, making it hard for her not to steal a look at it, but he'd notice and she wasn't going to give him anything, not even her curiosity. There was a small flash of relief running through her at his words, unreliable as the reassurance might turn out to be. It dropped the immediate concern down a few points on her internal list of priorities, gave her a little space in which to judge him. Threatening to fire-bomb hundreds of mostly innocent people wasn't his style, but she wouldn't put the _threat_ of it past him, just to puncture her recovering reputation.

He looked relaxed, though, casually leaned back in the plush of the armchair. He _did_ clean up nicely, making him barely recognisable to human observers, the only system he had to trick the old-fashioned way. With a shave and a hair-cut, a well-tailored suit would make anyone look decent, but his tall, densely-muscled body cut an especially handsome figure. If he didn't blend into the crowd, looking like this, it wasn't because people recognised him as the thug he was. She'd seen a similar effect on some of the Club enforcers, though to be fair, Pearce seemed much less uncomfortable in the getup than them.

He should still have been recognised, making it likely he hadn't been around long enough to give people a chance to take a longer look at him.

"Is this your game?" she asked.

He looked at her intensely, silently, weighing her. She didn't like his silence and there was no reason for her to let him have it his way. He only _thought_ he held all the cards.

"It's going to make a good headline," she said. "A better one than the old _'Heather Quinn the head of the Chicago South Club?_ ' that's going around. _'The Vigilante shows his true colours'_."

Like a paper-cut, a small smile crossed his face, never touching his eyes. He still waited, but she knew he was going to answer in his own time.

Eventually, quietly, he said, "This isn't my setup."

"It doesn't have to be," she pointed out. "It'll be enough if people think it was."

He tilted his head at her, watching her in an ongoing revaluation of her worth or threat value or whatever it was he saw in her.

Several security people appeared by the door and Heather spotted the uniforms right behind them. She considered for a moment. Pearce wouldn't have come without some kind of exit strategy, but whatever it was, it would be a fragile construction, he had deliberately exposed and cornered himself. He was certain she wouldn't take the shot.

"We should talk somewhere more private," she said. "Without a bomb squad breathing down our necks, don't you think?"

She looked up, motioned her security people to stand down, gave the firefighter urging her to _fucking leave!_ a bright smile as she walked past him. Pearce strode after her, jaded rich party guest unconcerned by the bombs. She noticed the ripple go through her people as they recognised who he was, the confusion of whether they were required to interfere, but they held back, reading her body language well enough.

With the hotel itself off limits, Heather took Pearce to her yacht moored at the Merlaut's pier. Someone had finally switched the fire alarm off and the wooden panelling in the luxury yacht dimmed the outside sounds. For the first moment inside, when the door fell closed behind Pearce, it was almost suffocating, but Heather refused to let it show.

Without pausing, she strode to the bar.

"Can I get you a drink?" she asked, picked a bottle of cognac and glasses. She sensed Pearce step in too close behind her, he slipped his hand down her bare back, barely a touch, just enough pressure to make her feel it.

"I'll handle the drinks," he said in a quiet rasp.

Inwardly amused, she conceded the point and stepped aside, withdrew to the massive desk and leaned against it, crossed her arms over her chest and watched his back.

He didn't really believe she'd drug him again, it had been just a point for him to make. He didn't even reach for another bottle, briefly glancing over the label, actually recognising it or at least pretending to. He filled two glasses, turned around stepped over to her, half an inch inside her personal space, giving her the choice between enduring it or overreacting.

She took the glass, smiling just slightly.

"You called it, you know," he said.

When she said nothing, he slightly tipped his glass against her's before he drank, edged away from her again and said, "You said the Russians would move in if you're weak."

He took a breath that sounded almost like a sigh. "Well, here they are."

"This doesn't look like their style," she pointed out.

"Their man in New York, Grigori Bragin, called 'Grisha' is known for the big gestures. It's given him a bit of a reputation back in the motherland so he got transferred here. I guess they've figured it wouldn't be that big of a deal in Chicago."

"I've never had trouble with Bratva before," she said, but refrained from pointing out how well her business went with them, or the nature of the merchandise Bratva helped move. It seemed a sore point for him.

"Well, you've never been weak before."

She took her gaze away from him, dragged it around the room while she was thinking it through. She knew the Club dealt with Grisha regularly, but he didn't ring any immediate bells, neither positively nor negatively. The Club dealt with all sorts of people and their organisations, it was nothing special in and of itself.

"So the bomb threat was a warning?" she asked. "Throwing their weight around?"

Shrugging, Pearce nodded, the corners of his mouth tensed in disdain. Transferring the glass into his other hand, he pulled his phone from his pocket, slipped his thumb across the screen a few times, then held it out to her.

Hesitating for a second, she took it. The picture it displayed made her blood run cold for a heartbeat. Explosive affixed expertly to a pillar in the basement. She swiped and saw another explosive on another pillar. Three, four, _seven_ , as the pictures progressed with each shift of her thumb. She was no expert, it looked professional enough, but whether it could've actually brought down the building was hard to judge.

"We did a sweep yesterday," she said, looking up from the phone. "This shouldn't be possible."

"Perhaps you're trusting the wrong people," he said and held out his hand for the phone.

A curt knock on the door interrupted her thoughts and she turned her head to watch Iain storm into the room, visibly agitated, but he stalled suddenly when he recognised Pearce.

"What the hell?" he demanded, looking from Heather to Pearce and back. "What… he…?"

Heather was in no mood to indulge his confusion. She stood up from the desk and walked over, held the phone in his face and said, "How did this happen?"

Still confused, Iain took the phone from her hand, swiped through the pictures with visibly growing horror.

Heather left him to it and turned back to Pearce. He'd dropped his hand and stood relaxed with the brandy in his hand, waiting for them with unconcealed disinterest.

"So Bratva and Grisha attempt to kill me, destroy my business and my reputation."

"No, you're right," he said. "It's a warning. The remote detonator code wasn't set. The charges couldn't explode."

"How do you know?"

Pearce shook his head. "How I know?" he asked back as if it was a stupid question.

"I got the bomb maker locked up. I can deliver her to the cops and they'll handle this by the book, or you can have her."

Someone with the skill and backup to pull off a stunt like this, Heather could make good use of them. Someone who almost certainly had an inside track to Grisha and his plans, who could clue her into whatever else he might be planning to disrupt her organisation. Someone one like that would be invaluable. Perhaps she could even turn her, make her work for the Club instead.

"What's your price this time?"

Pearce said nothing for a moment, then a slight smile curled his lips before it vanished again. He said, "My phone back."

Looking caught, Iain looked up and frowned, still visibly trying to make sense of the situation, looking for a script to follow. He shifted forward uncertainly, held out the phone towards Pearce as if he preferred not to get too close to him. "Uh, sure."

Pearce pocketed the phone and turned his attention back to Heather.

"Bratva is bad news for everyone," he said. "The cops can't handle it alone."

Something in his serious tone tipped her off, for a moment she considered withholding the punch, but then said, "And neither can you. Am I right? You've come here looking for an alliance."

He pretended to be amused.

"You'll get your money's worth," he said, humour like parchment. "I'll let you know where you can pick up your package."

He emptied the glass and put it away, then strode past her and Iain, who tensed in an attempt to not flinch away. Pearce stepped through the door and let it fall closed behind him so quietly it left the vacuum of a thunderclap.

"I could put a tail on him," Iain said.

"No," Heather waved him off irritably. "There'll be plenty of time for that."

The stifling quietness was beginning to rub her nerves raw, it was cutting her off from where she needed to be.

"I want to talk to with whoever's in charge out there," she said. "I want to know if these charges are actually there at all."

It turned out, they were. Though unlike in Pearce's photos, the charges were covered up to prevent anyone from seeing them.

"The thing is," the head of the bomb disposal unit told Heather a little later. "It looks like sloppy work, but… the explosives themselves are high-end, someone knew what they were doing, but… well, you see, you need to get the explosives _into_ the walls and pillars if you want to bring the building down."

Heather considered him for a moment, "It's a terror attack," she said. "It's doing it's job just fine like this. Doesn't need to bring the building down."

It was important to get fixed in people's heads very quickly. _Terror attack_. She didn't want even one respectable news source to even so much think aloud the idea this could be the opening salvo in a gangster war.

The man nodded thoughtfully, looking past at his men. "Strange times we're living in," he remarked.

Heather spared him a warm smile that failed to reach her eyes, already with thoughts elsewhere. She left the men to work in peace and returned to the yacht which served as temporary headquarter. She was reluctant to relocate somewhere else, she wanted to keep the Merlaut in her sight, even though she knew she probably didn't have much useful to contribute.

Iain got up from her chair when she walked in and she took it.

"I think I need to have a chat with King," she said.

The King, as Jacob King pompously called himself, had taken over from Carl Herrick as the business' security manager. She guessed the scenario was that some of these explosives had already been in place when they'd swept the hotel the day before, there were simply too many to bring them in in just one night, even if they were never meant to explode. For both, bringing the bombs in before _and_ after the sweep, some of King's men must have been in on it. Perhaps without his knowledge, but Heather doubted that, especially if he was already in hiding. He must have known something was going on. 

Iain frowned at her and said, "I can't reach him, I already tried."

He paused for a moment, clearly assembling the pieces in his own head before he said, "Do you think he's got anything to do with it? And the little rat's beaten it out of here?"

"Hm," she made, thinking for a long minute, bringing things into a semblance of order.

She took a breath. "It's going to be a long night," she said, though Iain was smart enough to not need the introduction. Without giving him any other warning, she rattled off what she needed him to do. Find a new location for the conference, keep the cops from prying too deeply into her affairs, fix her public image via an interview on TV and social media. She needed to work with few people on this, make sure she could trust them first, because if Bratva had already blown her organisation as wide open as it appeared, she would soon be jumping at shadows. It bothered her, but she could do this almost on auto-pilot. She could quantify these risks, even if she didn't know the details yet.

Pearce was the unknown, even if she had been correct in her assumption and he did need allies. He was good at holding grudges and she doubted he'd forgotten or forgiven their last meeting. Still, he'd put himself on her side in this instance, the trick was to know the moment — when it came — and he was her enemy again. Ironically, this still made Pearce more trustworthy than almost anyone in her organisation. Whatever else he was, he wasn't Bratva.

* * *

Aiden Pearce stood on the sidewalk across the street from the police line, lost in crowd of people craning their necks and taking pictures. No one was paying him any attention. 

The cops had funnelled the Merlaut's guests into a separate area, but avoiding it had been so easy he could have done it in his sleep, leaving him too much time to be aware of the Merlaut's familiar, glittering shape above. A dark feeling was lingering in his throat, sneaking up on him when he didn't make sure to squash it fast enough.

When he'd seen the unset detonator code on the charges, something had unwound in his mind, like poison. It'd be easy to set that code. He could've waited until the Merlaut was evacuated, before the bomb squad moved in. He could have blown these charges, burned the Merlaut to the ground and all the bad memories with it.

Even now, when it was already too late, he somehow still had to fight against the urge to do it.

With a growl lodged in his throat, he turned his back on the Merlaut, though he felt it looming behind him, stalking him as he walked away. Shrugging the feeling off, he pulled his phone out and a new surge of anger wiped away the throbbing regret.

Seven missed calls, all from the fixer he'd hired to watch over the captured bomb maker. He plugged his earpiece in and dialled him, but didn't waste time and already called on the tracker he'd left on the bomb maker.

_"Shit, Pearce I'm sorry,"_ the fixer said when he answered. He sounded breathless. _"She fucking got away, but I'm still on her."_

"Are you running?"

_"Shit yes, bitch is fast, too."_

Pearce crossed the street to where a Boxberg was parked.

"Keep the pressure on," Pearce told him. "Don't let her make contact with Bratva."

_"Doing my fucking best!"_

"Don't kill her," Pearce added in case the fixer forgot about that detail in the heat of it.

_"Fuck!"_

Pearce hoped that was an affirmative, but decided to let it go. The fixer sounded like he didn't have breath to spare for a prolonged conversation. He got in the car and threw his custom HUD against the windshield. It fed him live information about his surrounding, about ctOS access points he'd unlocked and could use, nearby police presence and a dozen other things he'd customised his system to filter for.

For now, all he was interested in was the location of the bomb maker. The fixer was right, she was moving fast and Pearce was quite a bit out from where he'd had her locked up. Good thing the Boxberg would get him there in no time. He put the traffic lights hack on continuous when he swerved out into the street, pushing the speed limit and other regulations, but not at breakneck speed. The situation didn't warrant it, besides the more time he gave the traffic lights to change, the less disruptive the hack would be and the less attention he was likely to attract. Blume was monitoring these malfunctions and he didn't have time to handle them right now.

He watched the moving tracker on the map, the area wasn't densely populated with little pedestrian traffic, giving the bomb maker few options to just snatch up someone's phone as she went. If he got closer, he could knock out cell coverage for a time, cutting her off, but he was still a few minutes away from that.

The fixer called.

"Where you're at?"

For a moment, there was just panting, then, _"I… lost… fuck… fast fucking… bitch."_

Despite the situation, Pearce smiled briefly to himself. He said, "Well, she _was_ an olympic athlete."

_"… like twenty years ago?"_

"Then how's she outrunning you?"

The fixer didn't answer, still trying to catch his breath. After another moment while his panting gradually faded, he said, _"Shit… what now?"_

Pearce watched the still moving dot of the tracker on his map. He pushed the gas down a little more and the Boxberg slid roughly across the asphalt as Pearce took it to the right lane and overtook a stalling line heading to a crossroads.

"I'll call you," Pearce said noncommittally before he hung up. He could try directing the fixer to the woman's location but by the looks of it, the man wasn't going to keep up either way. Pearce had vetted him primarily for how trustworthy he was, less for his stamina, though perhaps that had been shortsighted.

His phone let him know he was within range of the radio cell and Pearce didn't hesitate to punch in the command to disrupt it. Blume was becoming wise to this particular trick, the cell towers now had redundant systems running which they booted into when something interrupted them. Half the time, these systems ran on the same backdoors the original did, meaning Pearce could easily just knock it out again, but it was an ongoing problem. Eventually, he'd be forced out of the system and would have to rely on hi-jacking the signal and cancelling it on the device end of things. For the moment, however, he had a few more minutes to catch up to the woman when she didn't have the chance to call for help.

Pearce took the Boxberg past a rundown row of houses and into the inappropriate quaintly named Little Village. The bomb maker had veered away from the main streets and into the trash-littered, debris-strewn back alleys of the neighbourhood. The Boxberg was too large and unwieldy to follow, so Pearce took it around a bent, sped up again past where he'd be level with her current position, overtaking her before he stopped the car by the side of the road.

The L rumbled along above him as he got out, phone briefly up in front of him to orient himself and surmise the woman's direction.

Having lost her pursuer, she'd slowed down a little, but was still going fairly fast.

Pearce locked the Boxberg, though the group of 'bangers nearby had already noticed him and the car. He'd be surprised if it was still there by the time he got back, he'd need to acquire another car for the ride back. Someone shouted an obscenity after him, but no one bothered to harass him, the car was more interesting.

He strode along leisurely, slowly circling in towards where the woman was still moving, keeping houses and abandoned dumpsters between them. He came across a homeless camp, huddled together against L-track pillars with the track above offering at least some shelter from the weather.

The woman slowed down more, then stopped completely andfrowning, Pearce finally looked up from his phone to navigate the area on his own.

He broke into a run when the tracker revealed the bomb maker had abruptly changed direction. He was still too far away, so she couldn't have spotted him, but something else had attracted her attention and he had a feeling he wouldn't like it.

Finally close enough, he dropped his phone into his pocket, took a quick sprint that allowed him to jump onto two cars, piled on each other. The rusted vehicles swayed a little under his weight but held steady.

In front of him, a shoddy parking lot spread out all the way to nondescript warehouses and a closed and shuttered up Quinkie's. The woman was heading for the latter and Pearce spotted what she must have seen: An old pay-phone, leaning askew by the roadside next to the Quinkie's.

Wasting no time, Pearce jumped from the cars and started running. He hadn't taken a gun into the Merlaut, he hadn't wanted to unnecessarily provoke the Club members while he needed their complacency.

The woman had reached the pay-phone, picked up the receiver, using the moment to look around, spotting Pearce. He was close enough to see her hesitate, caught in indecision between staying and taking him on or running away and hoping she'd lose him like she had the fixer.

The moment of hesitation lost her her advantage. He wasn't sure if he could outrun her, certainly not with these shoes, but the time it took her to reach a decision, drop the phone and turn away wasn't enough to let her reach any speed. Just past the phone, he launched himself at her and tore her down with his full weight.

With his grip on her, he made sure she crashed face first into the ground, she struggled, dazed for no more than a second, then made a swift shift to the side, trying to dislodge him. He caught one of her wrists, pulled her arm out of the way and snapped his elbow into her face. Groaning, her resistance faltered for just long enough he rolled her around, wrists held in one hand, knee laid across her thighs. He slapped a pair of flexicuffs on her wrists.

She shouted at him in French and Russian, though he didn't understand the specifics, he had a pretty good idea of what she was calling him. But it was all she was going to do for the moment so he simply got up and took a step away from her, in case she tried kicking at him.

Realising he was out of reach, she dropped her head back down to the asphalt in resignation.

Pearce wandered back to the pay-phone and picked up the receiver. Surprisingly, it was giving a free-line signal. He hung it up, then turned back to keep the woman in sight while he called the fixer.

"Steve," he said. "I need a pickup."

_"On my way,"_ the fixer said. _"Uh, I want you to know that this could've been avoided if you'd knee-capped her like I said."_

Pearce rolled his eyes a little. "She's useless if she bleeds out."

_"Like the Club's not going to hang her upside down…"_

"'course they are, but that's their mess. Don't make me wait."

_"No, never."_

Hanging up, Pearce returned to the woman, pulled her to her feet roughly and dragged her to the shuttered up Quinkie's where he pushed her into a soiled bench. She snarled at him again.

Pearce regarded her for a long minute, staring down at her seated form.

"It's probably a good thing I have no idea what you're saying."

She glared and said, "I'm willing to repeat it."

"Only if you want me to deal with it."

He stepped aside and sat down on the bench, stretched out his legs and crossed them at the ankles, in every appearance of relaxation, waiting for her to break the silence.

She lasted somewhat longer than he had expected, but eventually she shifted in her seat and said, "You don't want to mess with this."

"Why?"

"Because you have no idea what you're getting into."

He arched a brow, giving her a short glance.

"People keep saying that to me like they think it's gonna stop me."

She chortled a laugh. "We heard all about you," she said. "Trust me, you don't want to get between us and the Club. I don't even understand why you care. Why not let us wipe them out for you?"

"Is that your argument?" he asked, feigning surprise.

"Why do you think it's a bad one?"

He shook his head. "I'm tired of people like you," he said. "You got in my way, that's all."

She frowned at the side of his face, but without looking back at her, he couldn't be sure of her expression. He doubted she'd try to run away again. A few years older than him, she was built like a whippet, no wonder the fixer hadn't been able to keep up, but she wasn't strong enough to mount a descent defence against him.

"What now?" she asked. "You're handing me over to the Club, what for? You think they can actually make me talk?"

He tilted his head and gave her a sidelong glance. "Think of it as helping your boss."

"Are you stupid?"

"Chicago isn't New York. The rules are different here."

"Oh yeah, because there's no ctOS in New York. I hate to break it to you, but Blume's been branching out into every other city and Chicago isn't special anymore. We've got our deals with them. It's not perfect, but we're good with Blume."

"Yeah that's the thing," he leaned back, let his gaze wander across the open, derelict space in front of them. "It's not Blume you've got to worry about."

"What, you?" she laughed and it sounded genuine. Pearce gave her a slow grin, then let it fade as he looked away from her again.

"I'm going to help _you,_ " she said with affected kindness. "You don't understand what you're getting into. We have an army. It doesn't matter how many you kill or ruin or… whatever scheme you've hatched. There'll just be more. Bratva didn't want Chicago, we had a good relationship with the Club, but they're too weak now, they're useless to us. If your lackey can't do the job, what do you do? You do it yourself. Heather Quinn will understand it, perhaps there's even some job for her."

She paused for a moment, tittered another mocking laugh. "But you're not going to be there to see it."

"Is this the part where I get scared? You'll have to tell me, because I ain't feeling it."

"What I said is true, so you're either lying to yourself or you're just stupid."

She shifted, pulled at the flexicuffs for a moment, then gave up and settled into silence.

She was in no position to make any threats he'd need to take seriously, he'd already dug through the muddied waters of her past. Lucille Roche had been working with and for Grisha for many years. Pearce hadn't been quite able to figure out their connection, because while most of the information was there, he couldn't read it and translation programmes didn't always provide a coherent result, especially from Russian. How and where she'd been recruited by Bratva was a mystery to him, but he wasn't even sure it was information he'd need. She cropped up in police reports now and then, first in Marseille, then in New York, clearly going where-ever Grisha was running the show for Bratva.

When Steve finally arrived, Pearce slipped to his feet, turned and looked down at the woman.

"How about we forget about this?" she asked lightly, clearly joking. "No bad feelings, eh? I heard you're not a fan of the Merlaut exactly."

He looked at her sharply, a reflex he hadn't been able to check before it gave him away and the smug expression on her face told him she'd been angling for exactly that reaction. No one alive knew about the Merlaut, not enough to put the pieces together. The Club had tried, Heather could probably make an educated guess about what had led him to go after Lucky all these years ago, but the details should've been lost a long time ago.

Lucille said nothing more in self-satisfied silence and before Pearce had time to question her further, Steve climbed out of the car and walked over.

"Oh god Pearce! Let me just say again how sorry I am," he said. A bump was clearly visible on the side of his head and his skin had an unhealthy tone. Pearce looked him over silently.

Pearce dragged the woman to her feet and marched her towards the car, though she dug her heels in the moment she realised he was heading for the trunk.

"Come on, don't," she grumbled. "Don't make me."

"For your good conduct?" Pearce asked. "You're lucky I don't break your ankles."

"Pearce, I'm sorry," Steve said again, standing a little away from them and watched as Pearce opened the trunk.

The woman growled a little, but climbed in without more resistance, but she was beginning to mumble foreign swear words again, glaring at Pearce before she sighed and let her head drop.

"Are we…?" Steve began when Pearce closed the trunk and strode around the car to the driver's side door.

"I'm handling it," Pearce said. "Get your head checked."

On reflex, Steve lifted his hand to his head and felt along the bump carefully, pulling a face. "But… I hate to be that guy, but… are you paying me for this?"

Pearce stared at him, waited for a moment. Of course he was going to pay him, it served no one to be petty about it and Lucille had already punished him for his fuck-up, but Pearce wasn't feeling generous about.

"You need to do what I tell you," Pearce said. "And then I'll think about it."

* * *

Momentarily lost in thought, Heather watched the city outside the mirrored and bulletproof window of her Magnate change from the glitter of the Loop to the bare-boned charm of Brandon Docks. 

By her side, Iain was speaking on the phone, checking with their hackers if the place had been scouted and was clear. Not that she expected any traps from Pearce, but the bombs in the Merlaut had her worried about more such tripwires being thrown in her path.

"I'm surprised he agreed," Iain said and Heather let an irritated look pass over him.

Pearce had proposed to make the exchange in a far more public place, at the Riverwalk downtown, or at the Botanical Gardens in Parker Square. She’d had Iain refuse both locations and Pearce had acquiesced almost immediately.

"He doesn't care," she said.

"But… public places are a lot easier to control for him, his ctOS access is… well, whatever it is. He's only got himself to worry about, so…"

"He doesn't care," she repeated and gave Iain a longer look until he got the point and fell silent. Iain was right, a public place gave Pearce a few advantages over the Club, but he didn't need to push for it too hard. He could be reasonably sure Heather wasn't going to attack him this early on, not when he was voluntarily parting with valuable information and support.

Heather listened to Iain make another call, then said, "Why can't we find King?"

Iain took a disgruntled breath before he answered, "I'm guessing he switched sides."

"Of course," she agreed. "But why can't we find him?"

"D'Souza said he checked the ctOS logs and King hasn't shown up anywhere. He's lying low, I bet. But I also bet he's still in Chicago."

Heather took her gaze away from him, looked outside the window thoughtfully.

"King's the key," she said. "He's the connection between Grisha and us and everything Bratva has planned, not to mentioned that he knows the names of everyone who's turned on us. If we can't find him, I'll have to ask Pearce."

"Why do you even trust him?"

"I don't," Heather said.

"We shouldn't be doing this," he said. "He'll just screw us over."

She glanced at him again and smiled a little.

"He'll try, but not right now. I'll gladly sit back and watch him screw over Bratva first."

"Unless he's working for them and this is just a ruse," Iain muttered, though more to himself so she left him his musings uncontradicted.

They slowed down, someone lifted the construction fence aside to let them onto the site. Heather's car and the two others drove through and her man pushed the fence closed again. It wasn't the most secure site, but unlike Pearce, Heather didn't have much of a taste for an audience, especially when she wasn't sure if things would go her way.

Her driver drove through the open gate into the empty warehouse, then stopped the car. Her two escorts stopped in a small half circle around them and her bodyguards got out. The cameras here weren't networked to ctOS, only to Taurus, the private security company she owned. If Pearce had access to these feeds, at least they were all on a level playing field.

"No one here who shouldn't be," Iain announced after he'd checked through the feeds. "Pearce isn't here either."

"Fashionable late," she corrected, chuckled a little at Iain's annoyed look and opened the door. She got out and walked a few steps away from the car, taking stock of her surrounding through the thin protection of her sunglasses.

The warehouse was completely empty, old railway tracks cutting it in half, their gates rusted open on all ends. Some trash and other industrial debris had accumulated here and there, dry grass cracking open the old concrete floor. Looking up, several of the windows on the roof and along the wall were broken, letting in streaks of sunlight and an almost uncomfortably cool draft gliding down her neck and back.

Iain had got out and walked around the car, leaning with his back against it as he alternated between looking around and down at his phone.

"It's all clear," her bodyguard said as he returned from the quick round he and his colleagues had done of the warehouse. Iain nodded in agreement and Heather said, "Good, keep your nerves, we're not looking for a fight."

A tiny tightening in the bodyguard's facial expression betrayed his misgiving, but he nodded grimly. Almost everyone in the Club had had some bad experience with Pearce, sometimes not personally, but everyone knew someone who had. Someone's deal falling through, someone's life being lost, someone being crippled for life. Pearce wasn't everywhere, but he was doing a good enough impression to make everyone wary and not a little itchy to take the shot when it presented itself. Not these men, though, Heather wouldn't have brought them if she didn't trust them to follow her orders.

"Here goes," Iain said sardonically and pushed away from the car to step in behind her shoulder.

Pearce drove in over one of the train-track entrances, swept his banged-up old Vespid in a circle and stopped a respectful distance away. He got out of the car, casually dressed in jeans and T-shirt in the unusually warm spring. A baseball cap dropped a shadow over his face and his gaze was completely hidden by black sunglasses, reflecting the light. He was armed, shoulder holster and a smaller one holding the baton on his belt, he'd stuck his phone into the back-pocket of his jeans.

Behind Heather's shoulder, Iain snorted and muttered, "We could kill him. He's not wearing any body armour."

"That's because we're not killing him," Heather said, growing impatient with having to repeat it. At least the others had accepted her decision that Pearce was off-limits for now, but Iain seemed to think he had to keep pushing, as if he thought he needed to protect her from some terrible mistake she was making. He wasn't normally so dense to her reasoning, making it especially irritating that he didn't seem to be picking on this one. Killing Pearce was just one way of getting rid of him, after all.

The Vespid's trunk was tiny and Heather spared a moment of pity for the woman Pearce pulled out of it, hoping she hadn't been in there for too long.

Heather strode forward, Iain behind him and stopped halfway between her people and Pearce. He shoved the woman forward, her hands were bound behind her back and she looked hot and sweat-slicked from her trip in the trunk. She was also not a little incensed, glaring at Pearce before she turned her attention to Heather.

"Lucille Roche," Pearce introduced her. "Born in Nice, France, Olympic athlete, but she got retroactively disqualified for doping. Joined the French army, spent ten years clearing minefields in the Middle East. Dishonourable discharge, worked for Bratva in Europe for a few years, came to New York with Grisha."

"You don't understand the first thing about this, _branleur_ ," Lucille sneered.

"Mouthy," Pearce added. "I suggest you hamstring her, she's fast."

Heather made a sharp gesture with her hand. "Pack her up."

One of her men stepped forward, gripped Lucille by the upper arm after Pearce had given her a shove away from him.

Lucille grumbled a curse, but Heather paid her no attention, keeping it fixed on Pearce.

"Thank you," she said, studying Pearce's face, considering how far she could trust him. Showing too much weakness wasn't in her nature and she'd made him fall for it once before, she doubted he'd let it happen again.

"I need your help in another matter," she said. "We've…"

A shot bit through the tranquil air, somewhere behind her. Instinctively, Heather dropped into a crouch and glanced over her shoulder, just in time to see a second shot drive through Lucille's chest after the first one had punctured her shoulder. Lucille was ripped out of the grip of the man who held her, thrown to the ground. A third shot felled the bodyguard.

The shots fell like hail, ripping into the concrete and her bodyguards in that first moment, before they could even react. Iain gripped her shoulder and half dragged her back to the car. He yelped when a shot grazed his arm and his grip of her slipped away.

Cursing, Heather twisted her own arm and pulled him down, dragged him the last inch behind the bulk of the car, where two of her bodyguards were also in cover. Lucille and the dead bodyguard still lay there, but the first shots had hit true and they were both already dead.

"What the fuck's going on?" Heather yelled, not even sure who she was asking. Iain looked as confused as she was, holding on to his bleeding arm.

"Mrs. Quinn!" a bodyguard yelled. "Get in the car! We'll hold them off!"

She had time for a quick glance around, but there were only her people, clinging to the cover of their cars, their guns out but looking for targets. The shots were coming from above, from the roof, through the open or broken windows there. 

She had to push the dead bodyguard aside to open the door, scrambled inside with Iain right behind her. Feeling a little better inside the car, Heather lifted her head and got a better look around, froze at what she saw past the driver's tense shoulder.

"Shit," she murmured, not sure if where the breath in her lungs had gone to.

Where Pearce had stood only a moment before was now a large puddle of blood and a thick trail of it leading back to his car. He'd pressed his back against it and he'd had time to draw his gun, though it lay discarded by his side as he clutched at a bleeding wound at the side of his neck.

Heather settled a guiding hand on the driver's shoulder and leaned forward between the front seats.

"Drive between the attackers and Pearce," she said. He nodded, hit the gas and drove the heavy car the short distance, hit the brakes sharply and made the tail swing out a little, successfully covering Pearce from most angles.

"Mrs. Quinn…?" the driver asked, opened his door to over a little additional cover.

"Stay," Heather told him as she pulled back, made eye contact with Iain, his face was grim, clearly in pain from his own injury, but he nodded. She kicked her door open and dropped out. Several shots impacted the car close to her head, and her heart jumped in her throat as she dropped to her knees by Pearce said.

His sunglasses had slipped down the length of his nose, blood smearing along the ashen skin of his face, green eyes far too bright. She had no time to try to read his expression, but he focussed on her, gaze digging too hard into her's.

"Heather!" Iain shouted. "We have to got out of here!"

Heather snapped her head around, fixed on Iain and said, "Help me get him inside."

Pearce had enough presence of mind to help, but he'd lost a lot of blood in an incredibly short amount of time, whatever strength of coordination he would otherwise have, had long since been lost, leaving Heather and Iain to heave him into the back of the car. Pearce's hands slipped away from the open wound on his neck, going limp even as Heather climbed in the car behind him and pulled the door closed.

"Drive!" she commanded and the driver hit the gas again, taking them away from the shootout while the bullets were still pattering against the car, denting the reinforced material alarmingly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Reference:**
> 
> _branleur_ (French) = wanker
> 
> * * *
> 
> **Author's Note:** Nope, couldn't leave it yet.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Additional Warning:**   Full frontal male nudity.

 

It barely hurt, Pearce only realised he was in trouble when the blood soaked wet and warm into his shirt and his hand came away drenched. He'd been focussed on watching the bomb maker drop like a dead bird, tracing the direction of the shot to the roof. He couldn't see anyoneagainst the glare of the sky and a moment later, it became irrelevant.

He was losing too much blood, he couldn't keep fighting like that, but a small part of his mind registered that the blood wasn't arterial and maybe he'd get to live if help came fast enough.

The prospect of death wasn't something that bothered Pearce overtly much even on a particularly bad day. It'd find him eventually, he'd go down fighting if he had the chance and if he didn't, it'd be quick and hopefully comparatively painless. In a way, he supposed, his death solved many problems. Once he was gone, Nicky and Jacks wouldn't be potential targets anymore for whoever was gunning for him at any one time. And he'd count that as a win.

He felt the hard bulk of his car behind him, keeping him upright, the bullets pattering the ground all around him and punching through the car. With fire from above like this, he might as well not have bothered with running for cover because it wouldn't matter much…

When he regained consciousness, the fight was still in his body, pulling his muscles tight and ready, trying to jerk upright against the sudden hard pressure of hands on his shoulders. He supposed the surgeon and the nurse holding him down were lucky, dazed and weak, he couldn't do much damage before his brain kicked into gear and he realised where he was.

"Just calm down," a female voice said, soothing but stern and he let himself be pushed back to the bed. "You're almost through it."

The hands vanished when he made no other attempt to move. He'd dislodged the oxygen mask, but the nurse pulled it away, now that he was conscious again.

The surgeon had apparently already closed the wound on his neck, Pearce felt the skin pulled too tight for comfort, ready to split open with every careless tension of muscles.

A woman crouched into his field of vision, giving him a quick, habitual smile.

"You're doing fine," she explained. "Just hold steady for a little while longer."

He didn't feel up to doing much else, anyway, at least not for a few more minutes.

He didn't have the greatest experience with hospitals anyway, generally preferring to avoid them in favour of some mob doctor or a veterinarian looking to earn something on the side. Hospitals asked too many questions. The first time he'd stayed in one for any length of time, it had been after he'd been beaten nearly to death and he'd gone from hospital straight to prison. Neither was something he'd want to repeat.

The second time when he'd woken up in a hospital had been infinitely worse.

He breathed through the drug-muffled pain while the surgeon cleaned the fresh stitches, applied some kind of salve, then carefully affixed a large patch over it. It glued uncomfortably under his jawline and up to his ear and he had a feeling it wouldn't stick too well against the stubble on his neck, but it'd do for now. He'd need to move soon.

The surgeon's shadow vanished and the nurse's hand was back at his shoulder, this time with a slight nudge to help him sit up. "Careful," she said.

His vision blurred a little when he sat up, but then cleared and he took the chance to look around again, he was alone with the surgeon and the nurse in the cubicle created by privacy screens. The nurse hung up a blood bag by his side, connected it to the IV in his arm.

The surgeon said, "I'd like to keep you here, but…" His hesitation was full of misgiving. "You're stable for a transfer. It's not bad injury, as these things go." He paused, tightening the corners of his mouth. "I'd say you should take it easy and I'd schedule a checkup, but… We'll see. There's also no need for you to be alarmed or do anything stupid."

"Like what?" Pearce croaked.

"Like breaking out and making a run for it. Mrs. Quinn is a very important benefactor of this hospital and she's vouching for you."

Pearce said nothing, just watched the surgeon's face for any sign he would put that misgiving into an anonymous call to the police anyway.

The nurse pushed one of the screens aside and stepped out, there were voices and a moment later, Heather walked to his bedside. She sought out the surgeon and nodded. He kept a thoughtful gaze on Pearce for a moment, but then withdrew without offering an argument.

Heather had changed clothes, if she'd been the one to pull him out, she'd have been drenched in his blood, but she looked as pristine as ever. She looked him over for a moment, then dug her gaze into his and said, "How did you not see that coming?"

"There were snipers on the roof," he said, looked away for a moment trying to reconstruct his reasoning. "I thought they were just your backup."

Surprise flitted across her face, immediately replaced by a grim mask of conviction. "The bomb maker's dead. So are seven of my best people."

She paused, then added, "Almost lost you, too. No need to thank me."

"I figure it makes us even."

She seemed amused for a second, glancing down over him, gaze lingering on the bandage on his neck. "Yes," she agreed lightly. "History repeats, doesn't it."

She crossed her arms over her chest. "Where are we at? Grisha has infiltrated my organisation. Few people knew about that meeting, most of them are dead and the others… I'm keeping an eye on them, but I don't know who to trust anymore. How is that possible? How is Grisha able to do all that so efficiently?"

Pearce bared his teeth a little, "Failure of leadership?"

"It's your fault," she said, subtle snarl in her voice.

Pearce snorted a tired laugh, let his head rest a little deeper into the small cushion under his neck. "My pleasure."

"You are going to help me fix it," Heather stated, the tone she used for giving orders to her people. She must know it'd make him bristle, so he just let it pass over him without reaction. Lethargy was seeping into his mind, making it rather appealing to just stay where he was for a day or two, watching her try to pull all the strings she had to keep the hospital staff from remembering their conscience. The smart thing would be to wait until the blood transfusion was done and get out of dodge as fast as he could, but he judged he still had a little time for that.

"You were willing to help before," Heather insisted. "Nothing changed."

"I was letting you have Lucille," Pearce pointed. "That's all."

Heather pulled a displeased face, "I don't know who I can trust anymore. The people on the roof were mine, the men in Merlaut were mine. I don't understand what is going on. I told few people about the meeting, but we both know someone could've listened in." 

"You got your hacker, you got someone at Blume, you don't need me."

Heather eyed him sharply. " _Nothing_ changed," she said again, but with a different inflection in her tone. "There's something you're not telling me about all of this. Something that's scaring you, perhaps? I know we're only talking because Bratva spooked you."

Pearce arched a brow at her, he waved limply with a tired arm, light-headed enough to be faintly amused by her attempt to play his male ego. He probably shouldn't antagonise her quite so badly, not until he was back on his own feet at least, but she was pushing too hard and too early for a commitment. She was asking him to lie to her face while he still needed her goodwill.

Unexpectedly, Heather dropped the argument, face still grim and eyes narrowed as she forced a stiff shrug, then turned around wordlessly and left.

Pearce allowed himself to drift, mind and body relaxed in the certainty that, for now, he was perfectly safe.

The nurse returned, did something on the cabinet with her back to him, then stepped to his side with an injection.

"What's that?" he asked as she put it to the IV.

"Don't worry," she said. He spotted Heather standing just outside the privacy screens, gaze fixed on him like a hungry wolf, setting off alarm bells in his head.

"It'll help you sleep," the nurse finished and the world washed out completely even before she finished speaking. History repeating itself indeed.

* * *

When he came to the second time, he kept his wits about him and eyes closed until his mind slipped into sharper focus and he could trust its observation. He was lying on something soft, too soft for a hospital, silk or satin under his skin and a thick pillow under his head. The only source of discomfort was his right arm, slowly getting cold in the caress of an A/C. 

There was no sound other than the A/C, either, no distant cars or radio or neighbours, everything was quiet. He cracked his eyes open slowly, traced his gaze over the edge of the bed and its dark blue sheets over the high, white walls, some abstract painting filing the empty space.

His right arm was cuffed to the metal frame of the bed he was lying on. He pulled on the chain carefully, but it seemed solid. He didn't recognise the make of the cuffs, either, certainly not regular police cuffs, which he could've broken out of easily.

A metal cabinet on wheels stood near the bed, some medical equipment and a fresh pack of bandages on top of. It seemed out of place in what was a spacious hotel suite, kept in dark-blue and stark white. He had to be either fairly high up, along the shore or he was in the outskirts of Chicago, given that he only saw a patch of bright sky through a window.

On the bedside table, Pearce spotted his phone, snatched it up immediately. He'd been asleep — drugged up to his eyeballs — for twenty-four hours straight, though he didn't feel especially rested.

Checking the logs, the phone had registered several access attempts, so leaving him the phone hadn't been Heather's first idea.

There was a new message waiting for him.

_You are in the Holy Well Health Clinic. You don't have to worry about cops and I've done everything possible so you don't have to worry about Bratva any more than I do. It stands to reason that Grisha cannot have gotten to everyone. I apologise for the handcuffs, they are merely to ensure we can talk before you leave. Call me when you're ready. -H_

Well, he wasn't ready yet. But before he did anything else, he checked his phone again, in case it had been cracked without him noticing, but he found no indication it had been compromised. He scanned the area for ctOS access points and logged in to take a look around the clinic.

Holy Well was a private clinic for those with the money to pay for its high-class services and guaranteed privacy. It was run by an old friend of Lucky Quinn's, so Heather picking it for Pearce's recuperation wasn't surprising. The old guard, from Lucky's time, weren't quite as likely to fall for whatever Grisha was offering them, if indeed that was all Grisha was doing.

Pearce knew he had been too quick to dismiss the Club members on the roof of the warehouse, he shouldn't have just assumed they were Heather's people just because their background checks said they were Chicago South Club, not when he'd already known that Bratva was buying off people.

The men's Profiler information was saved on his phone, though, so at least he could track them. The bomb maker would've been a better and more useful lead back to Grisha, but the men on the roof must have _some_ knowledge of what was going on, too. Enough for him to apply pressure until something gave, which he would be doing with gusto, because he took people shooting him personally.

Tracking them with just the phone wouldn't be possible, though, he needed access to ctOS' stored files and the CPD database to check their background, find out where they were now. He hoped Heather's people hadn't killed all of them by the time he caught up to them.

Even with his mistake still galling him and making him suspicious, he found no people in the clinic he felt deserved his special attention. Most of them were completely harmless, some local and national celebrities, an Arabic millionaire and his extended family, some foreign business people. Most of the clinic's staff didn't have records of their own, only the head people would know or suspect who was really running the show. Security was provided by Taurus and Pearce made a mental note to check out the company's files later.

Satisfied for the time being, Pearce put his phone aside and pulled his hand in front of him to examine the cuff closer. It wasn't the most secure setup he'd ever seen, but he'd need at least some wire or similar to break the lock. He was pretty sure the metal cabinet had what he needed, but there wasn't enough give in the chain to reach it. The bed proved far too solid, too. He'd probably get it loose eventually, but he decided it didn't warrant the effort when he had an easier way out of this.

He picked his phone up again and texted Heather: _Now._

Only a few minutes later, he got a text back from Heather, or at least someone using her contact information or even her phone. _One hour._

He snorted in irritation, but settled back and tried to relax, while he accessed the Clinic's free wifi and used to dig deeper into the place's network, rifling through patient files to pass the time. He found most of the rooms had discreet video and audio surveillance and it wasn't hard to guess what the gathered information would be used for.

A knock on the door made him glance up from the phone and a moment later, a young man walked in. He was dressed in a dark suit and with tightly controlled manners, Profiler identified him as an assistant of the clinic's director.

He stopped at the foot of the bed, tried very hard not to fidget, gaze darting over Pearce and the room behind him, as if he was looking for escape routes.

"I'm supposed to unlock you," he said, holding up the key in front of him.

Wordlessly, Pearce rattled the chain a little and lifted his arm. The young man blinked in nervous confusion, lowered the key and said, "Um, Mrs. Quinn asked me to, uh, please ask you to wait for her."

"One hour, yeah," Pearce said, deliberately looking down at the phone and not the young man, vaguely hoping he'd work up his nerve quickly so he could finally get rid of that ball and chain Heather thought was going to make him compliant.

When this wasn't enough to get the young man to make up his mind, Pearce looked up again, held out his chained hand and said, "Just give me the key."

The young man shook into motion, scurried forward just far enough he could put the key into Pearce's palm, then retreated again to the foot of the bed.

"Uh, we have room service, if you're hungry," he said. "And there are fresh clothes in the cupboard for you."

Pearce listened with one ear, unlocking the cuffs and flexing his arm when it was freed. He sat up and swung his legs over the side, but then had to hold on quickly to the bed when his vision unexpectedly blacked out.

Groaning, he blinked a few times until the vertigo receded.

"If you need medical assistance, you…"

"I'm fine," Pearce snapped and the young man flinched back several steps, but kept hovering, eyeing Pearce with an expression aggravatingly undecided between panic and pity.

"You can go," Pearce told him. "Tell Mrs. Quinn I'll be here."

"Of course," the young man nodded emphatically, took several subservient steps back before he turned around and hurried from the room.

He wasn't fine, trying to stand proved a bigger challenge than he had anticipated. He'd suffered blood-loss before, but never so much in such a short time. Heather dumping him into the nearest ER was the only reason he was still alive and the physical damage was, technically, minimal. He felt along the bandage again, moved his head a little to test it. No damage to his limbs, or bones or muscles, just a frustrating lack of strength and a wooly kind of lingering headache. He wondered if he could get another blood-bag from room service, maybe it'd put him back on his feet. 

He pulled himself to his feet, anyway, stretched his arms out over his back to try and force some limberness back into them. The hospital gown irritated him, so he slipped it off and balled it up, tossed it away as he retrieved his phone to keep an eye on the clock while he explored the luxury suite.

In the living room he found his empty gun holster on the table, with the baton and his belt by its side. He couldn't remember where he'd lost his gun, somewhere in that warehouse probably, but he'd get another. He slipped the baton from its sheath and swung it in a sharp arc, making the segments spring free smoothly. It made him feel better already.

* * *

With carefully measured steps, Heather walked into the suite unannounced. A a quick check with the clinic's security had revealed that they had, unsurprisingly, lost control over the surveillance on the entire floor and any attempts to restore it had so far failed, leading to the security chief calling it off. Staff hadn't been told who was in the suite, but if this sort of order got handed down, it was just generally better to shut the fuck up and wait for further instructions. 

Heather felt tired and jittery. Unlike Pearce and Iain, she'd barely got any sleep and she knew it was starting to show. The skin of her face felt dry, pulled too tightly over her bones, as if it was close to split open if she tried to make any expression other than a scowl.

Iain had had the decency to argue before he fell asleep and she'd let him be. Pearce, on the other hand, had apparently entertained himself with the Clinic's network and a generous helping off of the room service menu. He sprawled on the couch when she walked in, dressed in a Holy Well bathrobe, but looking angled and vicious as he scrutinised her.

The TV was showing a repeat of the press conference she'd given at the Rosette Hotel, where she'd relocated the clean-energy conference to. For a moment, she watched herself, the impeccable porcelain mask of her face and mourned a little the way it was starting to crack. 

"We need to talk about that drugging me habit," Pearce greeted her. He sounded amused, but not in a reassuring way, more with the clear implication that the only reason he hadn't paid it back yet was because he was still working on the details.

"I saved your life," she said, the second time and felt that it shouldn't be necessary to expect some form of gratitude for it.

"You'll regret it," he shrugged.

Heather swallowed down the urge to shoot back and drag him into an argument. He was baiting her, she was sure of it, using it to distract her from what it was she really wanted from him.

"Can we at least talk?" she asked, the coils of her self-control wrapping tight around her throat, scratching her voice. "You shut me down too fast in the hospital. If you'd listened, I could've told you who's almost certainly behind it. And I need your help to find him."

Large mug in one hand, Pearce picked up the phone from his side, gave it a little toss so it landed in his hand. He slid his thumb across its screen.

"Yeah?"

"After Herrick died, a man named Jacob King became my security manager. King worked closely with Herrick, they were in the same unit in the army, but I don't know any details. King's… not the man Herrick was, but he's good. Very loud, but it impresses the masses. Hits first. Likes to call himself _the_ King. I can't get a hold of him since the Merlaut."

She watched him, while his focus was on the phone. When he said nothing, she continued, "King was in a key position to get the bombs in place and to hide them during the sweep. The men who attacked us during the meet, they must have been his. If you checked them, they'd probably look like my people to you."

"I figured," he grumbled noncommittally. "Why can't ctOS find him?"

"You tell me," she said tartly. "I can't trust my people, but _think_ there's nothing there. I pushed on everyone I could at Blume, but again: nothing. He's not shown his face since that night. Not to a ctOS camera."

"What about his friends?"

She took a breath. "It's… not ideal. Some are gone just like him, or they don't know anything or… at least pretend they don't know. I haven't been cracking down on them as hard as I normally would, I don't want to break anything right now."

She leaned forward, fixed him. "I'm getting paranoid here and it's not helping."

He finally lowered his phone to look back at her, eyes bright in his still-pale face. His amusement was beginning to irk her, the blatant disregard for nearly losing his life a mere day earlier. The fact that something had spooked him about the events, that change she'd noticed in the hospital, coming back to her now, because then, perhaps she'd have believed he was just rattled.

"What else is there?" she asked.

He shook his head. "I don't know."

"But you have an idea."

He shrugged, took a sip from the mug, then pushed his shoulders into the plush and took his attention away from her and back to the television screen, watching her recorded face thoughtfully.

"Pearce," she said sharply. "You came to me, remember. You wanted a deal. You wanted to work together."

A tiny shiver crossed his face, it looked a lot like disgust.

Unexpectedly, he leaned forward, set the mug down and fixed on her. "The men on the roof, where are they?"

"Two of them died, the others got away," she said.

He tapped on his phone without even looking down. A heartbeat later, her own phone announced with a low hum that she'd received a message.

"That's what I have on them. You go find them, you lean on them."

"With what men?" she asked, each word a precise emphasis, to get her point across.

He only shook his head, "The ones you still trust."

"I trusted King."

He hesitated, she could tell the calculations were running through his head. "I'm not telling you how to run the Club," he finally said. "I don't really care."

Frowning, she crossed her arms over her chest. "And what are you planning to do? Enjoying my hospitality some more?"

Again, he shook his head. "I just waited for you. I can't do anything here, I need more than a phone."

A tiny shard of relief splinted in her throat, but caution made her hesitate, the idea of an alliance with her repulsed him, if she pushed too hard for a confirmation, she'd simply drive him away.

"I'm sorry about drugging you," she said quietly.

His eyes narrowed slightly, suspicious of the change of tack and unsure what to make of it. She hadn't expected the hard set of his face to soften just slightly, a slow sag of his shoulders as if he'd suddenly remembered how weak he was.

"It's fine," he said, matching her tone. "You saved me. Thanks."

He sat up, flinched when the move tensed the tendons on his neck and agitated the fresh wound. His eyes fluttered closed for just a moment.

"Play it on the defensive," he suggested.

"Obviously," she agreed, smiling a little, hoping to connect with him in some way. "I'll keep you in the loop, if you do the same."

Wordlessly, he nodded.

She took a step forward and held out her hand. Pearce looked up at her hand for a moment, than up into her face, before he reached out and shook it. His hand was cold, brief, but unrelenting pressure on his bones. He tucked her a little closer and said, "You _don't_ know who you can trust."

The sudden sharp intensity in his tone, repeating what she'd said all along, and the hard, cold grip of his hand froze her to the spot for just a moment. He was giving her a warning, something more tanglible than what it appeared to be. He'd been careful not to react every time she'd brought it up, but he _was_ spooked by something and it wasn't just Bratva, because he'd already known about them going in.

When he released her, Heather stepped back and regarded him in silence, trying to figure out what bothered her so. Somehow, he'd just seemed a lot more formidable as an opponent. Now, as her ally, he looked much more like a tired, ageing man who had to have his life saved by his enemy.

* * *

Lagrange Point was built on a foundation of several blocks of Chicago School buildings, topped off by gleaming glass fronts, interspersed by cafés and eateries. It was home to some of the hottest IT startups in the city, from data security to social media, augmented reality and all manner of entertainment. Blume dominated the city, but under it's protective umbrella was enough room for smaller companies to strive and grow without direct supervision, allowing for some impressive leaps in creativity. 

Pearce climbed out of the taxi in broad daylight, still a little shakier on his legs than he would've liked, but he doubted even Bratva was ready to start a firefight in such a public place. They weren't dug in deep enough to survive the backlash.

He crossed the street, glanced up along the front of the _Uplink 127.0.0.1._ building, the small group of hipster-looking people out front who ignored him as he passed. He followed a small alley along the outside of the building to the delivery gate where a local catering company was just unloading stacks of organic lemonade.

A bored looking man was watching them while he smoked a cigarette, eyes squinted to narrow slits in the rays of bright sunlight flooding down past the surrounding buildings. Pearce's phone automatically scanned the place, identified the man and woman doing the delivery and ran a quick background check on them. The smoking man returned as [Peter Marsh, 37, Server Support Specialist, recently diagnosed with lung cancer]. He also got flagged immediately with numerous unpaid speeding tickets and a court summons. 

When Marsh spotted Pearce he listlessly pushed himself away from the facade he'd been leaning on and sauntered past the parked van towards where a few steps led downward to a metal door.

Pearce stepped in close behind him and waited while Marsh lifted his head towards the camera to let it scan him. A small beep of denial could be heard.

"Fucking junk," Marsh complained, he withdrew, then stepped back into the camera to restart the scan. He was denied again.

Pearce patience drained out of him second by second, it was running on the same depleting energy as the rest of him. Making a low, irritated noise, he stepped forward, snatched the cigarette from Marsh's mouth and snapped it away.

This time, the scan completed successfully and the door unlocked, swung smoothly inward. Marsh held out his middle finger at the camera as he passed inside, Pearce followed silently.

It had been years since Blume had taken back the Bunker and plugged every privileged access Pearce and T-Bone had had established using the old ctOS centre there. They had, however, had enough time to backup the servers and move out with every last byte of valuable data that'd existed at the time. Storing all of it, though, maintaining it without manpower, space and energy consumption that'd left a million possible exploits open hadn't been feasible.

Instead of even trying, they cloned the contents of the servers and moved them into the spacious server room of niche IT company Uplink, carefully hidden in their network and their files. It was a setup with an expiration date, even if Pearce found someone reliable to replace Marsh. Eventually someone would come down here and count the things.

Pearce stopped and plugged his laptop in, then stepped back and sat down on the floor, legs extended out across the aisle with the laptop on his lap.

Marsh hung around for a moment, watching him. "So, like, you got suckered by a vampire or something?" he asked and laughed at his own observation. Pearce glanced up at him and Marsh shrugged.

"I got work to do," he said unimpressed. "You know where to find me."

He wandered off and left Pearce alone with the data.

Although the servers here held the same data they had in the Bunker, Pearce could access ctOS only through Uplink's own ctOS gateway. He'd long since established these privileges and because Uplink was a little more than a computer security company and a social media platform for IT people, it allowed him to dig fairly deep into some of ctOS' less public features.

Roche had rattled him when she mentioned the Merlaut. She could've been angling for a reaction and if it was true, Bratva — or whoever had had her killed — had done him a favour, but it hadn't sounded like she had just been guessing.

He'd killed everyone who'd been in involved in these events, but the longer he thought about it, the more obvious it became that just killing people didn't mean anything went away. Someone could've sat down and painstakingly puzzled it all together from the fragments floating around online and in the darknet, stashed away somewhat in Blume's servers. He'd come here to test the theory, if it was possible to reconstruct the events of 2012 without any prior knowledge. And if it would lead back to him.

It wasn't the most comfortable thing he'd ever done. It wasn't so much facing bad memories, but trying to block out his own knowledge to avoid bias that presented the problem.

Bratva had made it relevant, by bothering to investigate him as thoroughly as that. It's what you did, if you planned to con someone, you learned all the details about them you could find, figured out what made them tick and flinch. The blackmail material was useless today, knowledge about his and Damien's incursion in the Merlaut served no other purpose today than to intimidate him. To show that he couldn't keep secrets, no matter how irrelevant. If Bratva had entertained the thought of recruiting him, willingly or not, such insight might have been useful. Roche's words implied the idea had been dropped, but he wasn't sure he'd been a target in that warehouse and not just unlucky.

However, it revealed something else which he doubted Roche, or Bratva, had wanted to let him know. Everyone looking to make deals outside the law had some way to handle ctOS' ever present surveillance, but if Bratva had been able to dig this deep and find Pearce there, from before Lena died, they had access on a level the Club almost certainly lacked.

He was distracted when his phone buzzed and he picked it up to check. He monitored the media for anything related or interesting to him, it was never a bad idea to stay in the loop about what was going on.

_[Body found at Riverwalk]_ a WKZ article said as he skimmed through the piece, he arched his brows. The body had been found this morning, presumably having been dumped the night before. The cops were uncharacteristically tight-lipped about it, but rumour said the dead was Teddy Mahoney, a Club member, nightclub manager and pimp. He'd crossed Pearce's attention when he first tried to dismantle the Club a year ago.

He was about to put the phone away when another message cropped up, tripping similar filters. A fight at a bar had prompted a police raid, leading to the discovery of a brothel housed in the bar's basement. Just a quick search confirmed what Pearce had already suspected: Mahoney had been managing the place.

Someone's boots scratched over the floor and a moment later, Marsh appeared with a bottle in his hand. Bright red liquid with a neon green straw sticking out.

"Thought you needed some sugar," Marsh said as he stepped over Pearce on his way to the door.

Pearce took the bottle, the same organic lemonade he'd seen unload earlier. Marsh kept walking, pulling out his cigarettes on his way outside.

"Marsh," Pearce called and the man stopped, turned back. "Are you sure you should smoke?"

Marsh shrugged, but the gesture was tenser than he might have liked.

"What's gonna happen? I get cancer?" he asked caustically.

Pearce pulled out the straw and tossed it aside, took a careful sip off the sweet liquid.

"What about treatment?"

For a moment, Marsh didn't seem to know what to say then, then his expression darkened. He took a step towards Pearce, stopped, but said, "Hey, here's the thing. Let's make that deal we have? You know, where I don't give a shit about what you do? Let's make that go both ways, okay? Better for everyone."

"If you're worried about money, I'm sure I can do something about that."

The expression on Marsh's face darkened more and for a moment he looked like he'd lost his cool, he even twitched half a step forward before he forced himself to relax.

"Laundering the money is already more effort than it's worth," he said. "Just drop it."

With the clear intention of giving Pearce no chance to continue the argument, Marsh turned around and left.

A little while later, Pearce heard him return, but Marsh picked a different route back to whatever job he was busy with. By then, Pearce was already immersed again in putting his own disgraceful history together, trying to look at it from the perspective of some Bratva hacker looking at the same information.

Bratva hadn't come to Chicago unprepared, they had done their homework, he guessed they had done this very same thing for every relevant Club member. It'd allow them to bribe or turn a lot of them, but if Heather's instincts were correct, than her own people had been betraying her in troves.

Teddy Mahoney must have been among those who refused, so he'd become a tool to damage the Club in another way. He'd been looking through the backlog of news tripping his filters, the war was already in full swing.

Taking another gulp from the soda, Pearce pulled out his phone and called T-Bone.

_"Whassup?"_

"Hey, I need DedSec to look into something for me."

_"Why do you only ever call if you want something?"_

Pearce hesitated for a moment, vaguely glad T-Bone couldn't see his face.

He sighed, "Look, if I have to ask DedSec directly they'll just make me jump through hoops and I'll have to deal with their avatar. It's annoying."

On the other end of the line, T-Bone snorted a laugh. _"It ain't that bad. They just want to play."_

"Well, they got you to play with," Pearce said. "Bratva is going for a hostile takeover of the Club and it's looking… suspicious."

_"Big shark trying to eat slightly less big shark, nothing suspicious about that,"_ T-Bone remarked.

Pearce didn't answer immediately. "Not that part. But the Club has its ways, they shouldn't be going down at the rate they are."

_"Right, so what are you thinking?"_

"Is it possible Bellwether was used? To turn Club members?"

_"Hmm,"_ T-Bone made and Pearce could practically see him comb through his beard with his fingers while he was thinking. _"Bellwether doesn't work very well on specific groups. It just throws a wide net and enough people get caught in it, that's what Bellwether was. Pretty good for rigging general elections."_

"Rushmore was targeted," Pearce pointed out.

_"A very public person, it's easy to feed him the right kind of information. Criminals, at least the moderately smart ones, they won't be out in the open like that. Bellwether can't work with insufficient data, someone would have to do the legwork first. But I could be wrong, that code's from hell if I've ever seen it."_

"Can you look into it?"

_"It'd be easier if I was actually there."_

"There's a DedSec cell right here," Pearce smirked a little. "You think they're gonna say no if the great Raymond Kenney asks for their help?"

_"There's no reason for that tone."_

"What tone?"

_"The mocking one,"_ T-Bone growled a little.

"Oh, _that_ one? I thought it was the other one."

_"You're in a good mood. How's that?"_

"Anaemia," Pearce deadpanned. He took a breath. "So, are you helping or not?"

_"Oh I'm helping, but I make no promises, you hear me?"_

"Loud and clear, despite the beard."

_"That tone again… I'll get back to you. Or maybe I'll let you talk to an avatar."_

"Too kind," Pearce chuckled despite himself and hung up.

* * *

What Pearce had had no intention of telling Heather was that he kept regular tabs on many prominent Club bosses and other prominent figures. Even with ctOS, it wasn't possible to keep them all in his sight at all times, but he did have an eye on them. 

When he got home from Uplink, he sat down in front of his computers and began looking at what Jacob King had been up to the last few days. The man owned a rather roomy condo in Mad Mile, but he regularly cropped up all across town, often spending his days down at the Wards and Brandon Docks. It made sense, if, like Herrick, he was responsible to keep the gangs in line and handle all of the more hands-on dealing the Club engaged it. For the high-profile events, the Club tended to hire Taurus, so King wasn't around downtown too much.

Movement profiles alone wouldn't reveal much, at any of the locations King frequented Bratva could've approached him, but Pearce filed that away for later. He wanted to know where King was _now_ and that turned out to be harder to find than he'd expected. Like Heather said, King seemed to have vanished, he wasn't being picked up by any of his rigged surveillance cameras, most notably not by the one outside his own apartment building and his favourite pub. He was having an on-off relationship with a neo-burlesque performer calling herself Noire, but Pearce filter hadn't logged King neither near her home nor the theatre she worked at.

Theoretically, it was possible King was hiding out in some basement somewhere, or Bratva had seen him as a loose end to tie up and he'd reappear floating down the river soon enough. But Pearce didn't think both options were likely. If King had joined Bratva he would be too useful to discard this early on. He could have tried playing Bratva for his or Heather's gain, but from what Pearce knew about the man he wasn't smart enough to even try.

On a hunch, Pearce pulled up old footage of King, a shot of him outside his home when he'd glanced directly at the camera. Pearce ran Profiler over it.

[NO DATA]

Just to be sure, he tried with several other shots, but the result remained the same. Even more interesting, the data he'd logged about the snipers on the roof in the warehouse revealed pretty much the same result.

Cheating Profiler was a basic skill these days, but most criminals preferred to use a false identity over simply deleting themselves from the database. A failed identification could be just as suspicious as being correctly identified. King's public life was fairly waterproof, he didn't need to hide his face. King's absence from the Profiler database had to be recent.

Pearce picked up his phone and called Marsh at Uplink. He didn't like to involve him directly, but he wasn't in the mood for another trip there. Marsh sounded moody on the phone, but at least he followed instructions. The Bunker servers held an old copy of the Profiler database, using it Pearce could feed King's biometric data back into his own search filters. It wouldn't work ctOS wide, he'd need direct access to Profiler's servers for that, but his own system could scan the feeds for King.

The upload would take at least an hour, though, so when he hung up on Marsh, Pearce dropped the phone and allowed himself a moment of rest. He rubbed a hand down his face, pressed the heel of his hand over an eye.

He didn't want to consider why Bratva had invested so much time in figuring out his involvement with the Merlaut, but he couldn't help thinking of what T-Bone had said. Bellwether wasn't working very well on targets unless it was fed with specific information beforehand. It _was_ rather like a mark in a con or the target of a hit. You needed the details. If someone wanted to know what made Aiden Pearce, the vigilante of Chicago, tick, looking back at the Merlaut probably was very educational.

He pulled his hands away from his face and shoved his chair back, let it rotate away from the desk and he got up. Night had crept in while he'd been working, dipping the pitch-black surface of the lake into the same colour as the sky, muddied by a thin veil of clouds.

Without switching the lights on, he wandered into the kitchen and picked up a bottle of beer he took back with himself into the living room. Swiping his phone from his desk he took it back to the couch with him, but didn't immediately take his gaze away from the view outside the windows.

Had Bratva targeted him with Bellwether? And if they had, how would he even tell?

Sipping the beer, he let his head drop back against the whispering leather of the couch. Assuming Bratva had enough influence on Blume to make Bellwether work for them, they had used it to make Club members amendable to whatever offers Grisha made them. It'd explain why a man like King, with no reason for disloyalty had apparently changed sides from one moment to the next. Heather didn't know any of it, but her instincts were telling her her people were deserting her. She sensed things falling apart, he had no reason to distrust her about it.

So, he thought, if Bratva wanted to turn him against the Club, it hadn't worked. He felt no desire to turn against Heather, at least not yet and not for Bratva. He'd gone in fully intending to help her while Grisha's incursion lasted, so either Bellwether hadn't worked… or this was exactly the reaction he was supposed to have. Perhaps his presence was expected to further destabilise the Club, perhaps it was just to lure him out of hiding and take him out alongside the Club.

Emptying the beer, he put the bottle away, then swivelled on the couch and stretched his legs out along its length. He should be hunting the men who attacked him, the urge was there, but his mind told him he had a few hours more to rest. It wouldn't do to stumble into them only to be too wasted to stand up to them.

Using the remote function of his phone, he turned up the heating in the room a little and let himself be dragged into sleep by the warmth.

* * *

Several days later, Pearce sat at a small table, in the darkened back of the room of the _Le Cabaret_ , a glass of whiskey in front of him. He didn't pay the show up on the stage too much attention, focussed on his phone, cycling through the theatre's surveillance and people's unprotected smart devices to get a better idea of the place. 

Heather's people had ransacked King's apartment and his regular haunts, they had been to the theatre, too, roughing up Noire, but she hadn't known anything.

Pearce hadn't shared how close he was on King's tracks, but he couldn't trust any Club members while Bellwether was still a possibility, but neither T-Bone nor DedSec had contacted him about it yet.

He'd been able to track King's location using the old Profiler version, though it hadn't been as comfortable as if he'd been able to use ctOS. His system wasn't powerful enough to monitor all feeds simultaneously, the way the Bunker had been able to do, but King had eventually made the mistake to fall back on old habits. He sat in the front row now, watching his girl's performance, though the tense set of his shoulders revealed he wasn't as relaxed as he pretended to be.

The theatre employed just one bouncer, who hung around the back of the room and the entrance, but it wasn't a strip club, despite some passing similarities, patrons here seemed generally better behaved and Pearce spotted a few more women in the audience than strip-club's were used to have.

Most modern phones had low-level stand-by which continued to run even when they were turned off, but King had been smart enough to keep his phone powered down and even removed the battery, making it impossible for Pearce to access it.

Noire's phone was active, but it was in her dressing room and contained nothing useful. She'd tried the last few days to reach King and had failed, so she almost certainly wasn't in on things.

When the show ended and Noire slunk off the stage, King immediately left his seat and hurried to the narrow door leading backstage. The bouncer twitched in his direction to stop him, seemed to recognise him and drew back again.

Pearce accessed Noire's phone and used it as microphone. There was a camera in her dressing room, but the view was distorted by some sheer, black fabric hanging in front of it. Even so, it was obvious she wasn't too happy about King vanishing without a word only to reappear without warning in the middle of a performance.

King did his best to appease her, arguing to give him a little more time until Grisha's hostile takeover was done and King didn't have to hide anymore.

"Where's your phone?" King asked sharply. Pearce sighed inwardly and a moment later, the connection to Noire's phone went dead.

The bouncer still hovered ominously, gaze watchful over the place. He didn't look like he was about to move any time soon, so Pearce picked through his phone to discover he was keeping in regular contact with other staff members to coordinate during the night. It was easy to fake a text from the lobby, making the bouncer leave.

With him gone, Pearce got to his feet and slipped through the door leading backstage. It led to a narrow hallway between the back of the stage and several doors set on the opposite wall. The already narrow space was littered with stage props, dimly lit so as not to ruin the show outside. It smelled of dust and sweat.

Striding along the hallway, Pearce took another look at Noire's dressing room. The fabric was still in place, but it was good enough. King's jacket lay on the floor, his gun holster dangled messily off the table while he and Noire seemed to have made up, at least judging by the fact that he'd hoisted her to the make-up table, impatiently fingering past her stage outfit and shoving his trousers down so he could rut into her.

Originally, Pearce had intended to track King's movements and see if he went anywhere useful, but without ctOS is was a hassle and it barely paid off. King frequented a safe-house in the Wards where he and his men seemed to be based. Pearce had logged their information, but he hadn't picked up any phones or other smart devices from the place. No cameras, either, nothing he could hack and look inside. Which meant it was time to involve himself personally.

King and Noire were absorbed in what they were doing and didn't notice at first when Pearce stepped into the room. King's back was to him anyway and Noire had her face buried in his shoulder.

Pearce sauntered a little closer, picked up King's gun and tossed it behind him, out of reach. The disturbance was enough to jolt the two of them, rocking to an abrupt and doubtlessly uncomfortable stop. Noire had better reflexes than her man, giving an outraged cry, she snatched up a hairspray bottle from her side and hurled it at Pearce. It missed by a mile, while Pearce pulled out his own gun.

King was half shoved off by Noire, half tumbling backward with his trousers still around his ankles. He tried to simultaneously pull up his trousers, go for his gun and shield his dick, with the predictable result that he succeeded at neither. Pearce flicked the safety of his own gun and the small sound made King stop, awkwardly clutching the hem of his trousers upward, while he tried very ineffectively to stare Pearce down. 

"What the fuck do you want?" he asked with a growl, trying to make up for his unremarkable performance of just a moment before. He moved slowly and when Pearce made no indication to shoot him, King finally pulled his trousers up, regaining most of his composure once he was covered again.

"Answers," Pearce said.

Behind King, Noire had dropped to her feet and was slowly but surely edging towards his right. There was a shelf there, where the camera was, lingerie items and other clutter.

"Well, you're not going to get them," King said. "You know, I didn't think you'd be taking Heather Quinn's orders."

Pearce shook his head. "You're all the same to me."

"Actions speak louder than words. You're bringing me to her, aren't you?"

"Eventually, maybe," Pearce said lightly. "But first you'll have to deal with me. All you've got to do is tell me everything."

"Go to hell, Pearce."

Pearce sighed. He dug into his pocket and pulled out a pair of flexicuffs, looked over at Noire.

"You," he said and held them out to her. "Put these on him."

He saw something spark in Noire's gaze, enough to give him a warning half a second before she moved. With one hand reaching out for the cuffs, feigning complacency, her other hand dove into the shelf and pulled something out. Pearce snatched his hand away, brought the gun around and smacked it into the side of her face, knocking her aside. The pepper spray slipped from her hand and Pearce lunged forward, caught it and snapped it around just in time to spay it into King's face, who'd used the moment to try and jump him.

King flinched and howled, but he was military trained, knew he needed to keep going. Rather than drop back, he simply maintained his direction, trying to grapple Pearce, but he lacked both the coordination and the strength to actually tear him down. Pearce gripped his neck, pushed him forward and slammed his knee upward into King's stomach. The man's grip scrambled for a hold on Pearce, but Pearce simply stepped away from it, let King drop to the floor.

Noire had pulled back from them, gaze flitting around the room, clearly looking for another weapon to use. Pearce stepped over King, gripped Noire and fitted the flexicuffs on her, kicked her feet away from under her and used a second pair on her feet while she was still disoriented.

Then he went and picked up King, dragged him to the back of the room and hung him over the sink there.

King growled insults, but didn't try to attack again and seemed rather glad for the opportunity to cool his burning eyes.

Pearce had caught a whiff of the pepper spray as well, making his eyes water a little. He wiped an arm over his face, braced himself and returned to Noire. He picked up the chair from the dressing table, set it down close to her and dropped himself into it.

"What are you going to do?" she sneer, struggling against her bonds.

"Neveah," he said, using her real name. "I can tell you don't know what it's about. Trust me when I say you don't wanna to know. So… how much do you want to keep quiet about it?"

She snorted and tossed her head back, fake, baroque curls flying out of her face.

"What about Jake?" she asked.

"Come on, you don't really care," Pearce glanced over at King, who was still watering his eyes, but giving a blurry glare in Pearce's direction at the mention of his name.

Pearce looked back at him plaintively when he said, "He likes you a lot more than you like him. The only reason you keep him around is because he's good for the money. He doesn't understand your art, doesn't explain what he's doing and the sex is bad. And sometimes maniacs break into your dressing room and tie you up. How much do you want?"

She still glared at him, but the anger was beginning to fade. He'd seen her bank statement, she was roughly breaking even each month, costumes and make-up eating up anything she earned, even with King's subsidy. It looked like King was keeping her on a short leash, making sure she didn't go anywhere without him.

"One million dollars," she said, trying hard not to show a triumphant grin.

Pearce started laughing before he could stop himself, then toned it down into a darkly amused chuckle.

"Yeah, no, I'm going to do you a favour," he said. Tapped on his phone for a moment, then turned it over for her to see. "I've set up a eRiches account for you and linked it to your bank account. I'll transfer two grand to it each month for a year. That way, you don't have to answer probing questions by the IRS and it's more than King was giving you."

"For a year? And then?"

He grunted, "I'm sure you'll find someone else."

He took the phone back and fixed her. "Or I can just snap your neck right here," he offered earnestly.

She wasn't quite sure he'd do it, but the frown in her pretty face deepened markedly. She tightened the corners of her mouth and then said, "Okay, no, don't. I'll take the money."

"I'm serious," Pearce said. "No one hears of this, or money will be the least of your problems."

Some small spark of defiance simmered in her gaze, but her behaviour had changed immediately when payment had been mentioned. She seemed smart enough to keep her mouth shut about it all.

Pearce returned to the back of the room, tied up King, then dragged him along out of the dressing room and to the car parked behind the theatre, where he stuffed him into the passenger seat.

"You're making a mistake," King said.

Pearce took his time before he replied, pretending to be concentrated on driving. Eventually, he said, "How so?"

King laughed and shifted in his seat, Pearce glanced at him and saw a smug smile spread across the other man's face, made even less pleasant by his red eyes and the inflamed skin around them.

"You'll find out," he said. "Oh yeah, you will."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Reference:**
> 
> **Lagrange** from Lagrangian Point, here used as the name for a neighbourhood in the Loop. There's no in-game or real-life equivalent.
> 
> **eRiches:** like bitcoin, but fictional
> 
> **Uplink:** originally a game by Ambrosia, used in Brilliancy as an IT company, it hosts the Grid
> 
> * * *
> 
> **Author's Note:** Obviously the warning is about King flashing his junk, but I've just realised Aiden's probably naked after he takes off the hospital gown and goes to play with his, uh, baton… I hope I squicked no one. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author's Note:** I've said this before, but if you absolutely must shoot at Aiden Pearce, for fuck's sake don't miss.
> 
> **This chapter's ongoing typo:** I wonder, is it Faraday pooch? Or Faraday porch? 
> 
> **Notable characters:** Victoria Vanna is mentioned in Femme Fatale, she's in charge of the Club's human trafficking and forced prostitution. 

Pearce rifled through King's phone leisurely. He sat leaned back on the toilet lid with one leg extended and resting on the rim of the bathtub in front of him, keeping the shower curtain pulled down to shield against the spray as King thrashed helplessly in the tub.

With his legs hoisted up and tied to the water tap, King could just about keep himself from drowning while the water spilled out over the side, washed over his face by the waves he himself created. If he kept still, Pearce assumed he could probably keep his nose above water and breath a little easier, but the fight wasn't out of him yet.

For now, his phone was by far the more interesting thing anyway. While it was a common Risu smartphone model, an app had inserted itself into its OS. The implementation seemed clever, but Pearce couldn't be entirely sure of it, because the app was in Russian and lacked language options. There were only so many ways to code this sort of thing, so Pearce could make some sense of it, but manipulating it would be a lot more difficult. King's phone had never been turned off, it merely masked its signal in a way Pearce wasn't used to look for, making it practically invisible to all his usual scans. He'd had the suspicion that something of the sort was going on, but he'd not found anything with the bomb maker, she'd been using a normal phone for some reason, which was why he'd been able to find her at all.

It explained how Bratva had been able to operate in Chicago completely under the radar and the seeming absence of communication between King and his men or King and his Bratva contacts.

A particularly hard lurch by King was followed by loud chink and a grinding sound, making Pearce look up. King had managed to pull the tap out of the wall by an inch, making the old tiles crumble. Thinking he was getting somewhere, King renewed his struggle with vigour, yanking at the tap. Pearce could tell it would take King an hour or more to actually free himself and if he did, he'd probably just drown anyway since he couldn't support himself with his hands.

Pearce ignored him, checked out his contacts and recent activities. King didn't have an Invite account of his own, but seemed to frequently log on to Noire's. He was a regular on the Grid, as could be expected from a man with his job, but his digital footprint was generally small. It didn't look like it'd be enough for Bellwether to work with. King had several Digital Trips saved on his phone, one which Pearce hadn't seen before called 'Unmade', it was clearly King's favourite past-time.

There were no suspicious Russian names in the contacts, even at a first glance, Pearce recognised many King had been talking to, but it didn't mean he wasn't in regular contact with some of Grisha's people. Pearce himself used an app that deleted most of his messages after they'd been read and prevented phones from saving his contact information. No doubt Bratva would have access to something similar. Perhaps he could reconstruct some of it once he got home.

It'd take some time to adapt his programmes to scan for this signal while piggybacking onto ctOS, then he could track anyone with a phone like this. In fact, once he cracked it, it'd be easier to track them, because no one outside of Bratva was likely to be using this particular signature, they wouldn't be able to hide in the white noise.

Without being able to check for a covert tracker, Pearce wasn't going to take any chances with King's phone. He transferred some of the data to his own, then slipped King's phone into a Faraday pouch before he put it aside.

He got up and pulled the shower curtain aside and looked down over King's soaked form. When he saw Pearce, he struggled harder, used precious air to gargle obscenities.

Unimpressed, Pearce reached out and turned the water off, then flipped the lever to let enough water drain that King's face was out of the water.

"Fuck you!" King shouted. "I'll rip your limbs off one by one! I get out of this fucking tub I'm going to fucking kill you!"

Pearce regarded him silently. King should've had training in withstanding torture and know better than to engage the man on the other end at all. It just opened you up for further prying, but as Heather had pointed out, King wasn't the brightest tool in the shed and it'd been years since he'd been anywhere near military drill. People got soft far too quickly.

"Let's talk about Bratva," Pearce said.

"Eat shit you fucking piece of…!"

Pearce put his hand on top of King's head and pushed him under water, he gargled in shock, swallowing desperately when a gush of water filled his mouth. Pearce held him under patiently, gaze wandering around the room, watching the yellowed tiles and old layer of grime there.

He tightened his grip in King's hair and pulled him up again. Sputtering, gasping for air, King couldn't pick up his tirade immediately.

"…sick fuck asshole…"

Pearce pushed him down again, kept him there for a moment longer, right until King really increased his struggles, then Pearce yanked him up again.

Pearce said, "You're an idiot. You know how I know?"

"I'll rip your balls off and feed them to you!"

"Free piece of advice," Pearce continued calmly. "You should be buttering me up. Because if you don't, I'll just leave you here with the water running. Do you think I can't find your buddies in the Wards? Maybe I should go talk to them."

King's self control was already rattled and for the moment, he was just trying to get as much air as he could, he wasn't saying anything this time, just watched Pearce with anger and panic warring visibly in him.

"I don't really get it," Pearce said. "You got a good job with the Club, why change sides?"

King growled something inaudible, which might have been another insult, but the moment Pearce tightened his grip on his head again, King shouted, "It's obvious! Just look! It's all falling apart!"

"What is?"

King looked at him as if the question confused him. "What? The Club, of course. Things haven't been the same since Lucky died. It's… a sign of the times, it's evolution, man. And I don't want to go extinct with Heather Quinn."

Pearce watched him, kept his thoughts from floating to the surface of his expression, he didn't want to give King anything to latch on to. The truth was, Heather had done a good job at keeping things together. Unlike Lucky, she'd been faced with her organisation being left in ruins three times in short succession. The deaths of Lucky and Niall had damaged the Club and she'd only narrowly avoided a similar fate just a year ago. He could imagine some Club members getting fed up with the ups and downs, but events had actually washed King to the top of the food chain. Whatever position Bratva had promised him — if they didn't just kill him when they were done — it wouldn't be nearly as well-paying or as secure as the position he now had.

"What gives you that idea?" Pearce asked.

"It's obvious," King said. "Just look. It's obvious."

Something about the repetition was odd, King wasn't the most eloquent man in existence, but it didn't seem like something he'd use as a catch-phrase.

"Tell me, how did you meet with Bratva?"

King's brows creased in new confusion, then blinked up at Pearce.

"It's…" he started, then fell silent again, collected himself and spat, "What's it to you anyway? How's it feel to take Heather Quinn's orders, huh?"

Pearce shrugged. "I don't know, why don't you tell me?"

King laughed, "I can't remember. Damn bitch."

Pearce sat back on the toilet, hands dangling between his legs as he looked at King.

"So what's the plan?" Pearce asked. "Grisha waltzes in, ruins the Quinns' business and takes over? Blume stands back like a beaten dog and CPD aren't invited? That the idea?"

"The Club's finished. Just look at you, they couldn't even take one asshole down, times are going to change with Bratva. I dunno if you're religious or anything, but you should better start praying."

"Hmm."

Pearce thought about it for a moment, then got up and turned the water back on as he left the room. King shouted new insults after him before he ran out of air to do it, splashing and choking helplessly in the bath.

Wandering a little further down the empty hallway, Pearce called T-Bone.

_"Nothing,"_ T-Bone said when he answered. _"There are some… well… smelly connections if you know what I mean… between Blume and some Bratva bigwigs, but we couldn't find the big obvious folder labelled 'Bellwether for Russian Takeover of Chicago'."_

"In that case it can _obviously_ not have happened," Pearce remarked dryly. "Something's up, T-Bone. I feel it. I just had a chat with this Club boss turned traitor…"

_"Ah, is he the background noise?"_

"Don't ask."

_"Oh, no, I won't. But, I can only tell you, we found nothing. Maybe Blume's running something on a closed network we can't get to from here. You'll have to get in yourself. I can put you in contact with some people from DedSec who could help you out."_

Pearce considered it. Until he knew what was going on, bringing anyone new in could be risky, especially when brainwashing was going on somehow, because it completely changed the rules.

"I'll think about it," he said. 

_"It sounds like you're having some trouble, do you need backup?"_

"No, I'm fine. You just do your thing in San Francisco."

_"How about you head down here and catch a bit of sunshine?"_

Pearce chuckled at the thought of just leaving Chicago behind in the middle of a mob war. It would certainly be something neither Heather nor Grisha expected him to do.

"Some other time, maybe."

_"Hey, it's an open invitation."_

"Thanks."

He hung up and stepped forward to the balustrade, leaned against it while he was considering his next moves. There was a good chance Bratva knew how to track King's phone, so they could already know about this location and he'd need to move King somewhere else or hand him over to Heather's tender care. Perhaps she had the patience to get something useful out of him, but Pearce didn't think there was much to learn from him. He either really didn't have any useful information due to some brainwashing, even if it wasn't Bellwether, or because Grisha had never actually told him anything. Both were possible and if either was true for King, it would be true for his men. It looked more and more like Bratva was letting Heather's own people do the dirty work for them while keeping themselves in the shadows. In light of this, bringing in Roche for the bombs might have been a tactical mistake, not only had it roused Pearce's interest, it had also tipped Heather off to something going on within the ranks of the Club.

Pearce could only guess, but he knew Grisha was a new arrival in Chicago, perhaps the plan hadn't been his and Grisha was known to like the big gesture.

His phone buzzed and he held it out in front of his phone. It was an unknown number, but his app kicked in and traced the call for him automatically, resolved the number to its owner: Iain Darcy.

"What?" he answered.

Iain took a second longer to react, perhaps a reaction to the hostility in Pearce's voice.

_"It's Iain,"_ he said.

"I know. What?"

_"Heather asked me to make an appointment for you for a check-up at Holy Well."_

Pearce frowned, not quite sure what to do with that information. On reflex, he brought a hand up and patted the bandage on the side of his neck.

"I don't need a check-up."

_"The doctor said you shouldn't…"_

"Is that the only reason you called?"

Again, Iain paused for a little longer than necessary. Pearce thought he'd got to know the man fairly well a year ago and it was an easy guess to make that Iain was confused about what to make of Pearce's sudden reappearance in his and Heather's affairs. Pearce had been wrong about Iain, too, about the depth of his devotion to Heather. Now, Iain was clearly afraid of Pearce's retaliation against him and Heather, but Iain didn't know what to do about it.

_"Are you making any progress on finding King?"_

Pearce felt a smile ghost across his face, listening to the ongoing splashing just behind him, but let the expression fade before he said, "How bad is it at your end?"

_"What do you mean?"_

"Teddy Mahoney and at least seven other high-ranking members are dead. Your brothels and casinos are getting raided. I heard about another raid on the port, seized a shipment of stolen art," Pearce counted off the events that had happened in the last few days. "Three bomb threats against your nightclubs, plus a very suspicious fire in another one. An attempted hostile takeover of Kessler. Taurus losing the security contracts for the Risu stores. Do you want me to go on?"

_"You… know all of that?"_

"Why would you think I don't?"

_"Look, it's not good. You can tell. But… it's not bad, either. It's pinpricks. Big pinpricks, but nothing irreversible. The problem is, we can't fight. We don't know where the enemy is. Who of our own people will suddenly turn around and backstab us. You know something about that, do you?"_

"I know it's not what I thought," Pearce conceded.

_"What's that supposed to mean?"_

"Where are you right now?"

Iain hesitated, uncomfortable with giving out this type of sensitive information on the phone, but he must have remembered who he was talking to.

_"Sinclair Plaza, Heather owns a penthouse. It's under an independent security contractor, Sentris, unaffiliated seems safer these days. Are you… coming by?"_

"I know you have hackers working for you."

_"Yes?"_

"Who's your best?"

_"Uh… Lucas D'Souza, used to be DedSec, worked for Blume for a while, got fired for his extracurricular activities. Works for us now, good contacts to everyone."_

"Do you trust him?"

_"Is that a trick question?"_

Despite himself, Pearce chuckled a little. "Alright, under normal circumstances, would you trust him?"

_"Yes, definitely. He's annoying as fuck, but he's got talent and a lot of little in-roads into all sorts of systems. "_

"Does he have a setup?"

_"I guess?"_

Pearce sighed. He could use T-Bone's contacts, but he wasn't quite sure they would be any more trustworthy. DedSec's agenda made them morally inflexible. They wouldn't want Bratva in Chicago any more than Pearce, but even he found helping the Club hard to swallow. Asking DedSec to do the same, even with T-Bone's backing didn't seem very promising.

"Tell him to expect me, I'll see him tonight."

_"What about King?"_

"Hmm," Pearce grunted and glanced over his shoulder at the bathroom door. "You can come pick him up. You should hurry, he's getting tired."

* * *

Gunshots pattered in the distance, the sound carried on the gentle spring wind, too far away to be cause for alarm. The area was disputed territory since the Viceroys had to give ever more ground against both Red Serpents and the Corlanders. No one was safe, which was why this neighbourhood was shuttered up tight by anyone still forced to live there. Though the thin walls of the ramshackle houses did little to keep the noises of television and music and fights from spilling out into the street. 

This house looked like it had been ransacked a while ago, part of the wall ripped out, apparently with the help of a chainsaw. Pearce eyed it for a moment by the brightness of distant street-light. He adjusted the strap on his shoulder to make sure nothing would hinder him. He hit the wall running, transferring his momentum upward before gravity had a chance to realise what he was doing. He found purchase on a narrow windowsill with one foot, a nook in the wall with his hand and used the swing to pull himself up on the roof.

It was sagging a little in the middle, groaned unhappily under his weight, but held steady when he set his feet carefully where the beams ran below. He circled the house until he reached the other side where the flat roofs of two dormer windows looked out over the neighbourhood.

He set up on the roof of one of the windows with an unobstructed view of the house where King's men were hiding out. Opened his laptop by his side and put up ctOS camera feeds in split screen to keep the house under watch and get a look inside.

He'd spent the better part of the day to set this up, but now that it was all coming together, it was a sleek programme running in his mind, all the separate parts coming together.

King's friends were still lying low, he hadn't been gone for long enough to make them nervous and Pearce had no way to gauge the Russian's response and whether they knew or cared about their henchmen.

Using the Russian phone signal, he determined that all men were in the house. He hadn't been able yet to figure out a way to crack the phones remotely, but he'd have access soon enough. For now, knowing they were there was all he needed.

Of the ten men who'd been on the roof in the Wards, three had been taken out by Heather's bodyguards, the other seven were now scattered around the house. Profiler failed to identify them, but running the old version worked just fine and Pearce had made sure he didn't get the wrong ones.

Through an upstairs window, he spotted a man sprawling on his bed, his phone and his chest. He was either asleep or listening to music.

Jumping to another camera, he found another man in another bedroom, cross-legged on his bed, also playing with his phone. In the downstairs living room, three sat on the couch, watching some reality tv programme with a crate of beer for company.

In the kitchen, another just retrieved a bowl from the microwave and poked it with a fork, looking rather unenthusiastic about it.

"Help is on the way," Pearce muttered, switched out of the camera and checked the ETA of the pizza delivery he'd ordered for them. He was still missing one man, after all.

When the pizza arrived, the man who answered the door was visibly confused, argued for a moment, called at his buddies inside, but finally took the boxes with a shrug.

He went back inside, shouted. One of the men upstairs got up and went to the door and vanished from view only to reappear in the living room. Pearce didn't know where the last man had been, he couldn't see everywhere, but he appeared to claim some pizza.

The other one upstairs just lifted his head, shouted something, adjusted the plug in his ear and let himself drop back down.

Pearce watched them for a moment, cycled through the cameras again to make sure he hadn't missed anything. He'd considered simply blowing them up, lure them all into one room and fire a grenade into them, but he didn't want to risk damaging their phones.

He also didn't want it to be over too quickly and picking them off one by one wasn't even revenge, it was poetic justice.

Resettling on the shaggy roof, Pearce got in position behind his rifle, trained the scope on the upstairs window. With the suppressor on and at this distance, it was unlikely for anyone to hear anything other than the shattering of glass.

The man swam into his scope, still relaxed on the bed. The angle wasn't perfect, but the distance was good and there was almost no wind he needed to compensate for.

Pearce flexed his finger down to the trigger, held his breath and fired. The recoil pushed into his shoulder and he lost sight of his target for a second. Focussing it back down, he saw he'd hit the man perfectly.The bullet had torn through the soft tissue under his jaw and into his head. Save for being rocked by the impact, he hadn't even moved.

Pearce glanced to the laptop and the camera feeds. The men in the living room had noticed the noise, he could tell by their body language, but they didn't seem suspicious yet. After some back and forth, one of them got up and walked up the stairs to check.

Pearce leant back behind the scope and waited, finger resting on the trigger guard. He had a moment of perfect tranquility, aware of the spring air on his face and the smell of spilled gasoline drifting up from the junker parked just below him. He heard the other gunshots from the gang war skirmish, it sounded like it was getting a little closer, but not so close it threatened to breach this intimate moment.

The man walked into the bedroom and startled, a moment of confusion he never recovered from because Pearce squeezed the trigger and watched as it ripped the man from his feet. He fell across the open doorway, so when the third man came to check, he was smart enough not to walk into the room.

Pearce refocussed on the living room window, had just enough time to aim at the man sitting on the couch in the moment it took the warning shout from above to make them scatter.

Sunset was beginning to make the light uncertain, rays cutting across his vision. The men inside the house had enough sense to turn off the television and all other light sources, hoping for a little extra cover as he dropped from Pearce's limited field of vision.

Patiently, Pearce kept the rifle trained on the downstairs windows, one after the other until he picked out the target of a man leaning a little too far past the edge of the window and searching the outside for the unknown attacker.

Three men left and Pearce guessed this would be the moment the survivors would decide beating it out of there would be their best option. Perhaps they'd even called for backup, but Pearce had no way to check or listen in. Either way, he had a few more minutes alone with the remaining three targets.

He put the rifle down and stood up, barely wasted any time on mapping out the route across the neighbourhood. He jumped from the roof to an awning, the cheap plastic cracked, but held long enough for him to jump to the ground. He rolled back to his feet and took off running.

The way to the safe-house was an uneven maze of trash-strewn backyards, ramshackle shacks leaned against houses and debris from where houses had collapsed. It'd slow down another man, but Pearce had done this a thousand times, since his childhood, running an obstacle course like this was second nature.

It took him less than five minutes to reach the house, veering off into the shadow of a garage wall, Pearce watched as one of the men appeared in the doorway, edging forward carefully.

If they had any sense, they'd stay put and wait for backup. It stood to reason that if a sniper stopped shooting at you, it's because he had something else planned.

Well, Pearce thought, looks like these guys weren't going to benefit from the lesson.

He crouched down and followed the outline of the garage until he was out of the man's direct line of sight, then vaulted over the fence, hit the ground running until he reached the house's wall and followed it back to the door.

A screen on one side allowed Pearce to get close and he didn't wait for the other man to move further — or back. Pearce drew his gun, pushed himself away from the wall so it wouldn't hinder him and fired through the thin laminated wood of the screen, three shots on different heights to account for the other man having changed his position since Pearce had memorised it.

A short yell followed, then a curse losing its fury almost immediately. Pearce turned around and ran back along the side of the house, used his gun to smash in the living room window and climb inside.

"Shit!" someone shouted and Pearce spotted the two remaining men in cover, facing the door. Without aiming, Pearce fired in their general direction to deter them from taking him out while he was in the open. He dropped behind the couch for a moment, it was useless as cover, but they couldn't get a clear shot fast enough.

Regaining his feet on the other side, Pearce swung the baton when the bullets started to rip the couch apart. Pearce shot the first man, hit him in the shoulder and yanked his gun-arm away with a shout.

The other man was too close, Pearce crashed the length of the baton against his throat, than snapped it down on his forearm, hard enough to crack bone. The gun fell uselessly from his hand.

Pearce stepped over him to deal with the other one, who'd recovered from the shot enough to try and hammer and elbow into Pearce's turned back.

Pearce deflected the move by simply stepping out of his reach, swung the baton in low arch against the man's legs to make him topple forward. Pearce twisted behind him, brought the gun up and shot him in the back of the head.

He brought the gun back up and fired at the other man, who was scrambling for his gun with his good hand. One bullet punched through his chest, he took the second in his face, splattering brain matter over the wall and doorway behind him.

"You sick fuck," someone growled.

Pearce drew back into the comparative security of the corner by the front door, until he could get a look at who'd spoken.

The man he'd shot through the screen pulled himself along the short hallway. By the looks of him, one of Pearce bullets had hit his shoulder, the other had gone into his stomach. Blood drenched his shirt and the hand with which he was holding his guts in.

He'd picked up his gun again, but held it only in a limp hand by his side.

Pearce holstered his gun as he stepped out of the shadows and into the doorway to watch the man's slow advance. He remembered his name, Hunter Davis, numerous convictions for violent altercations. He'd spent as much time behind bars as he'd been outside.

"If you knew that," Pearce said. "You should've stayed out of my way."

"Well, fuck you," Davis spat. He hadn't stopped walking, though every step seemed heavier than the last. He faltered for a second and the gun slipped from his hand. He blinked, a mirthless laugh gargled from his throat.

Pearce watched him and let him come close, fixed him with his stare until the man's expression sobered. He laboured to a stop right in front of Pearce, so close Davis had to tilt his head back a little to look at him.

"Give me your best," Pearce offered, tone casual and self-assured. He wasn't surprised when Davis gave an enraged shout and drew the knife from the sheath at his belt.

He stabbed it low, at Pearce's flank, despite his state, he was fast, but the look in his face betrayed that he'd never really expected the knife to connect. Pearce bent just far enough to the side, the knife only snagged his shirt, than knocked the hilt of the baton on the man's wrist. Pearce switched the baton to his other hand and twisted the knife from the other man's loosening grip. With the same, fluid motion, he pulled the knife back up and slashed it across Davis' throat, then swung around behind Davis and used the knife to slice deep into the side of the neck, where the artery was.

Davis made a high-pitched sound in his throat, almost like surprise, bringing his hand up to clutch at his bleeding throat while his other still clutched his belly.

Pearce gave him a shove and the man toppled forward.

He kept moving for a little while on the floor, aimlessly crawling, then curling in on himself as his life bled out of him.

Pearce watched him, idly planning his next move, now that he was on the offensive. He brought up his hand to stroke lightly across the bandage on his own neck, then blinked irritably and took the hand down to shove it sullenly into the pockets of his jeans.

* * *

When the doorbell rang, D'Souza was in the middle of finishing a quest, he'd had to do some level-grinding until he was ready to take on the dungeon, so making it all the way to the last chamber and its boss battle was something he'd been eager to do all evening and no random doorbell was going to make him stop now. 

It rang again and D'Souza hit pause reluctantly. He'd never get back into the flow of it now. He shuffled to the door, unhooked the latch and pushed the heavy sliding door aside.

D'Souza wasn't quite sure if Pearce announcing his arrival earlier had made him nervous or not. After all, the vigilante wasn't coming to hurt him, so there was nothing to worry about. However, like pretty much anyone with dirt on them he had spent some time checking behind him every so often, just in case Pearce was hiding in the shadows somewhere, waiting to bash them over the head. The man just seemed to function that way.

It didn't help that D'Souza had been one of the few people on the inside of Heather Quinn's plan last year, though he didn't really know how exactly it had gone down. He'd also seen the video of Vincent Fisher's demise and felt a little uneasy at the thought that it might eventually get a sequel.

So this was Aiden Pearce in the flesh, D'Souza looked him over. Not like he could stop himself, all things considered, and if Pearce wanted to take offence at it, D'Souza decided he'd do some grovelling and hope to get out of it.

Pearce looked pale against the stark black of his T-shirt and lightweight jacket. The collar didn't reach high enough to cover the patch against the side of his neck. The strap of a messenger bag lay across his chest. He was half a head taller than D'Souza, somewhat slimmer than he appeared in video — like most people, D'Souza thought to himself. Bags under his eyes made him look older, skin dry and cracked, green eyes narrowed in impatience or annoyance.

"Holy shit," D'Souza muttered. "Darcy said you'd be coming, but… man, I didn't believe him."

Pearce shrugged, then suppressed a sigh and said, "Can we get started?"

D'Souza jolted out of the way and Pearce stepped into his spacious loft apartment. It was on the good side of gentrification, D'Souza liked to say, but the longer he was away from DedSec, the less it bothered him. He earned some good money with the skills and talents he had, there shouldn't be any shame in enjoying it.

In the time D'Souza pushed the door back closed behind Pearce, the vigilante had made a beeline for his computers, lined up along the length of his apartment. It was an impressive setup, if D'Souza could say so himself. Worth more than the whole damn building.

He really didn't like it when Pearce pulled a chair close and sat down, hand on the mouse and the keyboard as if he owned the place. He'd dropped the messenger bad on the table beside him.

"Hey!" D'Souza shouted before his self-preservation got around to check the response. "That's just rude! Can you at least talk to me first?"

Surprisingly, Pearce stopped with what he was doing, leaned back away from the desk, gave D'Souza a long look, but then nodded. He didn't relent the chair, but he reached for his bag and pulled out a pile of phones, each neatly packaged into a Faraday pouch.

"What do you need me to do?" D'Souza asked. He rifled through the phones briefly, then left them to find himself a second chair.

"The phones belonged to people who switched sides, so it's obvious they must have been in contact with Bratva, my guess would be their contacts use self-deleting messages, but maybe we can reconstruct something."

"That's all?" D'Souza asked. Self-deleting messages were a bitch to reconstruct, but it wasn't particularly hard to do.

Pearce fixed him sharply and D'Souza wasn't entirely sure how he should react under his gaze, his mind groping for something to say that'd lighten the sudden frosty mood.

"Bellwether," Pearce said, clearly watching D'Souza's face for a reaction.

"Brainwashing software," D'Souza answered, because he really didn't know what Pearce wanted to hear. "Neat shit if you've got it working for you."

"It's just an algorithm," Pearce shrugged. "It's not hard to write, it's the information input that makes it dangerous. And Blume has all the information it needs. Bratva has the means to buy in, but I'm not sure Bellwether could do this."

D'Souza must have made a particularly stupid expression, because Pearce said, "You do realise what's going on?"

D'Souza didn't answer immediately. He didn't _know_ exactly,in the sense that no one had actually said anything specific to him, but he paid attention to what was going on in Chicago, not just on the surface, but underneath it. In the last few days, the Club had been hit by a perfect storm of minor problems. A raid here, a failed deal there, nothing that'd be powerful enough to disrupt the overall business on it's own, but these things added up. The moment Pearce had mentioned Bellwether, things suddenly made sense. All these Club bosses doing stupid shit, or failing or switching sides, D'Souza hadn't understood why it was happening until then.

"You think Bratva brainwashed Club members?"

Pearce took a breath, "They did _something,_ but I'm not sure it's Bellwether." He glanced over the phones. "These people, they aren't targets for Bellwether, their digital footprint is too small and unreliable. Bellwether is written for normal people, not the mob."

D'Souza followed Pearce's pensive gaze over the phones.

"So…" he started. "I'm also looking for a pattern."

"Yes, if there's one," Pearce said.

"Have you ever _met_ Heather Quinn? That woman's not going to fuck up on that scale."

Pearce's expression hardened and D'Souza could tell Pearce had some less than charitable thoughts just then, but the vigilante only said, "No, she's not."

* * *

D'Souza spent the better part of the night breaking into one phone after the other. They all had different levels of security, from completely unsecured to someone using a retina scan app. Thankfully the latter was just some cheap app download from a questionable source and D'Souza knew how to crack it. 

He'd withdrawn to the couch and left the desk to Pearce somewhat grudgingly. He didn't like having a stranger, any stranger, use his system like this, but he had a feeling trying to argue wouldn't go over well.

Pearce maintained a frosty professionalism that didn't invite any chatter on D'Souza's part, no companionable offer of putting on music or making coffee or ordering some food. Pearce didn't seem to care.

While D'Souza scoured the phone for anything useful, Pearce entertained himself with the programme that allowed the phones to hide their signals from ctOS.

"Did you know that there are only five 'real' Digital Trips?" D'Souza said, scrolling through the contents of yet another phone. "The guy who wrote them just disappeared and no one really knows. There are some knock-offs, of course, but they never seem to get it quite right."

Pearce grunted a vague affirmative and the chair creaked a little when he moved. D'Souza passed a glance over his turned back, tried to assess whether the man was annoyed or not.

"A friend of mine," D'Souza continued. "She couldn't handle it. Like, at all. Turned complete psycho and attacked her room-mate because she thought he was an alien or something. It's the loony bin for her now."

He paused for a moment.

"Did you ever try one?" he asked then.

"Once or twice," Pearce said, sounding disinterested and without turning around.

"What's it like?"

"You don't know?"

D'Souza gave a long suffering sigh. "Doesn't work for me. I get dizzy and then I throw up. Headaches for _days."_

"They work different on everyone," Pearce remarked.

"Yeah," D'Souza agreed. "Or not work at all. But that's funny, because they all got this same Trip on their phones. Called 'Unmade', never heard of that one before."

The chair creaked again, a little longer this time and D'Souza looked up to see Pearce had turned around completely. Reclining in the chair, one long leg extended he seemed to be glowering across the room like a big cat calculating its leap.

"It's on all of them?" Pearce asked.

"Yeah," D'Souza confirmed and frowned at Pearce's tone. "You think that means something?"

Pearce didn't answer immediately, hard features covered more in shadow than light from the computer screens at his back. D'Souza was about to say something to break the silence, but before he could make up his mind, Pearce slipped to his feet and crossed the room.

He picked a phone at random from the pile and dropped himself to the couch.

"Got an earplug?" he asked.

It took a moment before the command trickled through D'Souza's mind and another until he decided not to argue the point. He got up and went to his desk drawer to retrieve the plug. He handed it over to Pearce, hovered uncertainly in front of him.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" D'Souza asked. "If that's how they all got turned…?"

A smile split Pearce's expression for just a second. "That's not how any of these things work."

"Oh, that's good," D'Souza remarked, but stepped back and watched Pearce as he put the plug in and thumbed through the phone for the Trip. Then he settled himself a little more comfortably on the couch and closed his eyes.

* * *

The Trip drops him off on top of a rooftop at night. The cityscape around him is Chicago, but so subtly different he cannot put his finger on it before the fist smashes into his face and knocks him to the ground, tilting his view of the city. 

Instinctively, he tries to roll away and back to his feet, but the world solidifies completely and he's tied to a chair, cuffs digging into his wrists. It takes him a moment to remember this is not real and the pain only imaginary.

A woman leans into his field of vision, flawless make-up on a face that doesn't quite look Chinese, curls of dark hair spill over her shoulders as she wraps her fingers around his jaw and tilts his head up to face her. Dark red lips peel away from sharp white teeth.

In a voice of smoke and velvet she says, "With us or against us?"

He shakes his head, more in confusion than denial. The Trip's plot muddles his thoughts, forces him to play along regardless of what he actually wants.

"Not asking again, lover boy," the woman says. "Say it."

He blinks past her and spots others, like him tied to chairs and knocked over to the side in various degrees of disarray. They are all dead, their heads resting in pools of blood. He guesses they gave the wrong answer.

"Say it," the woman whispers and leans even closer. The barrel of a gun presses against his temple and he struggles to remember it's just a game and he's playing it because he wants to.

"No," he says through bared teeth, because he can always come back and do it differently next time. Smiling, seductive, she pulls the trigger and there's an instant of absolute pain before the Trip fades out.

* * *

D'Souza's loft came only reluctantly back into focus, the younger man's worried face right above him and a particularly uncomfortable echo of sensation thrumming away in his left temple. None of the Trips are particularly enjoyable during failure, there was always a fairly good approximation of pain and death, but this one revelled in it, clearly trying to draw the sensation out for as long as possible. 

"Are you okay?" D'Souza asked.

"Fine."

"Uh, bad trip?"

Pearce shook his head and pulled the plug from his ear. He'd take a look at the code before he let the Trip anywhere near his brain again, but he was definitely on to something.

The original Trips had been Defalt's brainchild, they had nothing to do with Blume or Bratva for that matter. What D'Souza had said was also true, no one had managed to recreate the total immersion effect that Defalt's work had achieved, but this Unmade was professional work. If anyone could do it, Russian hackers could. It'd be easy to put a more nefarious subliminal messages into something that was already intended as a mind-screw. All Bratva had to do was release it, sit back and let it run its course for a while and then move in when things were ready to drop into their lap.

Pearce dropped the phone and the plug on the table and got up.

"I said it's fine," he repeated because D'Souza hadn't stopped his hovering and he was entirely too close.

D'Souza drew back half a step, tried to cover for it with a shrug and a searching glance around his place. "So… what do you want me to do now?"

Pearce considered for a moment.

"Take a look at my work," he said, pointed with his chin towards the computers he'd been working on. "It needs to be implemented and patched into ctOS, do you have someone for that?"

"Patch ctOS? Did you really just say that?"

"Integrity checks will knock it out of the system within 24 hours, by then, I'll have location and number of all phones using this encryption. Do you have someone?"

D'Souza thought about it, pulling a grimace. "Yeah, I know someone who could do it, but it's not going to be cheap, it's a career ending move."

"Doesn't matter," Pearce said.

"Alright," D'Souza said and hesitated for another moment. "Uh, I don't think you've noticed, but you're bleeding."

For an insane moment, Pearce couldn't figure out why he should be bleeding from an imaginary gunshot, but then he remembered the actual injury on his neck. It had had a few days to heal, but he'd put a lot of strain on his body today. He patted the bandage on his neck for a moment, felt the hard patch where the blood had seeped into it.

"It's not that bad," Pearce decided, but got to his feet and went to pick up his own phone from the desk.

"You just keep going, I'll be back in a minute."

D'Souza's skeptical look trailed him outside, where the cool night-air hit him in the face like a physical blow.

The echo of the gunshot was still in his mind, for some reason he couldn't stop going over the lingering sensation it had caused. It made him want to get back inside, examine and experience it.

Obviously, if he gave the right answer, the woman wouldn't shoot him and he could continue, unravel the plot and maybe even spot its manipulation, though there was no guarantee things would be on the surface for him to see. It was interesting that the game required every participant to start out by betraying whatever side they were on or they couldn't progress at all. But that didn't quite seem to be the reason. He wanted to get back because… he didn't even know.

If that was brainwashing, it kicked in a whole lot faster than he'd thought. He'd need to be more careful in the future.

The question was, was this feeling of unease enough evidence that he'd found out what was going on with Club members deserting Heather Quinn in droves?

He breathed in the cool night air, mulling it over in his head, leaned his back against the dirt-stained wall by the door and pushed his head into the cold concrete. After a while, he took out his phone and checked if Iain's phone was on. It was set to sleep, but that wasn't a problem. Indeed, it was preferable. People tended to notice somewhat better if you hacked their phones while they held it in their hands.

Iain had the Unmade Trip on his phone, but logs revealed he'd accessed it only once and for barely five minutes, most likely because he got tossed out of the storyline the same way Pearce had. Unlike Pearce, Iain had either not had any desire to go back, or he simply hadn't got around to do it. It stood to reason that Iain wouldn't be susceptible to Bratva's manipulation, anyway, his devotion to Heather was running much deeper than most of her other people. Still, it was good to know Pearce wouldn't have to keep an extra eye on him in case he'd underestimated the power coercive power of the Trip.

After some more consideration, Pearce called Heather's phone instead of Iain's.

It was the middle of the night and it took long minutes until she answered, but her voice was crisp and awake.

"I think I got something," Pearce said, skipping any greeting.

_"I hope it's more useful than King,"_ she remarked. _"He's talking gibberish."_

Everyone subjected to too much torture talked gibberish, but Pearce was fairly sure that wasn't the problem with King.

"He doesn't know anything useful," Pearce said.

_"I figured,"_ she remarked. She paused, clearly to think something through, not quite sure if she wanted to share it with Pearce so he left her to it. Eventually, she said, _"I got attacked today."_

"Attacked?"

_"By Victoria Vanna. She's…"_

"I know who she is," Pearce growled.

_"If you feel like shooting some more snuff, be my guest."_

"She's still alive?"

_"She escaped. I visited her in her club, the Qube. I was_ sure _she was reliable. It turns out she's been feeding information about our operations to the cops. We could track them yet, but given the number of raids we'd had, it's safe to assume she's a snitch."_

Vanna was fairly high on his list, he wouldn't mind going after her, but he wasn't sure if he wanted to do it at Heather Quinn's say-so.

_"You said you got something."_

"I'm not sure if it'll pan out, but I've been going over the phones of the men who attacked us in the warehouse and killed Roche. They've been playing a Digital Trip called 'Unmade'."

_"That's all you have? Some VR drug?"_

"It's exactly what we're looking for. Something capable of altering the way a person thinks. It's not Bellwether, at least I couldn't find any indication for it and Bellwether couldn't do this anyway. I need more time to make sure, but it fits."

Heather was silent for a long time.

Pearce said, "I already checked Iain, he's clear. Get him to send me a list of your hackers, I'll check them out and then let them look into your people one by one."

_"You want access to the names of my people?"_ she asked.

"It's possible to write a virus to check for the data, but it'll take time for it to spread to all the phones, if you want to know going in who you're dealing with, you'll have to do it the hard way."

Again Heather took her time with answering. She suspected he had bigger plans for the names he'd asked of her and he saw no reason to try and lie about it. She wouldn't believe him and access to this kind of inside information would be invaluable down the line.

_"I'll get it done,"_ she finally said.

"I'm also working on a way to track actual Bratva members. I'll know where Grisha is hiding soon."

Another pause and her voice changed almost imperceptible.

_"You should come and see me,"_ she said. _"We have plans to make."_


	4. Chapter 4

After the first few laps, the water of the pool became a little too warm for comfort, offering more resistance against her tiring limbs. Each move made her aware of the fresh bruises all along the side of her body, her aching shoulder and hip. It had saved her life, of course, a bodyguard tossing her out of the way before Vanna could shoot her from under the table.

In retrospect, the event was almost hilarious in its cliche, complete with Vanna's fake smile and the small revolver she kept glued to the underside of her desk. If she'd known the woman was this shallow, Heather would've replaced her a long time ago instead of keeping her around when she'd phased out some of the old guard.

For all that, Vanna had been doing a good job, her loss was going to unravel much of the foothold the Club had in the shadier parts of nightlife entertainment. How bad it would be depended entirely on how much longer this situation was going to continue.

She saw Iain step out on the terrace and slowly walk alongside the pool, easily matching her speed on foot. She considered just making a turn at the end, shave off another moment of peace in the water before she had to deal with whatever bad news he had for her.

Instead, she got hold of the edge and leaned her elbow out on the dark tiles, wiping loose strands of hair from her face and looked up at him through the steam coiling around her on top of the water.

"Alderman Lee is under investigation for abuse of office," he said. "The CPD just seized all her files and locked her and her staff out."

Hardly even surprised anymore, Heather closed her eyes for a moment and muttered a curse.

Lee had been a cornerstone of Chicago's politics for more than a decade, smart enough to reap the benefits of good relations with Lucky back in the day while maintaining a healthy distance from too dirty business deals.

Tensing, she levered herself from the water. It was just after sunrise and goosebumps sprang up all over her skin as the cool spring air hit her.

"I think we should keep a low profile about it," Iain said, following in her slipstream as she walked to the sun lounger. He reached past her and picked up the thick bathrobe, held it out for her and used the chance to wrap her into his arms when she slipped in it.

"Smart idea," she agreed and let her head rest against his shoulder.

"I thought I could maybe catch up to her lawyer," Iain said quietly. "I could catch him at his favourite breakfast joint, keeps things off the books. Maybe there's some assistance they'll need anyway. "

She considered the scenario if they did not help Lee out at all, neither publicly nor secretly. Let her take the fall for some imaginary or actual transgressions instead of trying to catch the falling knife. It seemed just another pin-prick by Bratva to harm the Club's business, stalling all of them just meant stretching themselves too thin. However, especially with political figures, it helped to stay in their favour.

She nodded against him, but then tensed her body and Iain's arms dropped away from her. Her hair had left a wet patch on his shoulder, turned the shirt transparent and glued it to his skin.

Heather sighed a little inwardly, wistfully, but turned away and walked inside and into the kitchen.

"Any news on Pearce?" she asked.

It had been two days of radio silence from Pearce's end and Heather wasn't sure if it should worry her or not. It was his own fault for not confiding in her and taking the aid she would be able to give him, but she still needed him right now. At the moment, he was her only advantage. The only asset the Russians probably didn't know how to handle.

Unless, of course, they _had_ handled it and now Pearce's body was about to be washed up on the Riverwalk, like Teddy Mahoney's had been.

The sour thought lingered in her mind as she tapped the espresso button on the coffee maker and settled both hands on the counter, letting herself relax a little as her body warmed up.

"No sign of Pearce," Iain said. "But that doesn't mean anything. I guess he's vetting our hackers, that'll take time. I suppose they got protected systems."

Things were falling apart and she couldn't do much to stop them. She was itching to take the fight to the Russians, show them who the city really belonged to, but she didn't even know where they were. None of the feelers she'd sent out had revealed anything useful and even her Blume contacts were shrugging their shoulders helplessly.

"Yes," she said, but she knew it sounded like an accusation.

The coffee maker hissed, short and sharp, almost covered the buzz of the in-house security. She glanced up, but the monitor was set into a pillar and the angle wasn't good enough to recognise anything but moving shapes.

Iain was closer.

"Speak of the devil," he muttered.

Heather stopped with the cup hovering at her lips.

"Pearce?"

Iain nodded in wordless disapproval.

Sipping the coffee, she walked over. The lobby of the high-rise was staffed both with security and concierge, her surveillance allowed her to cycle away from just the concierge and to a surround view, dismissing the man's somewhat worried face.

From the drop-down view, she saw Pearce stand idly by the counter, gaze focussed downward on the phone in his hand while the concierge had stepped away.

She registered distantly that Pearce was _letting_ them see him on the camera feed, some small concession to their uneasy alliance perhaps.

Heather reached past Iain.

"Sent him up," Heather told the concierge and added, "No search."

_"Are you sure?"_

But Heather had already muted him and strode away. They could dismiss her order at their own peril, though she doubted Pearce would make a scene even if security insisted on searching him, or actually took away his weapons. Even the best security people still needed to be reminded to treat people's smart devices as weapons, too, so Pearce's most dangerous assets were going to stay with him anyway.

"Go talk to the lawyer," Heather told Iain.

"I can stay," he offered.

Amused, Heather shook her head. "Talk to the lawyer," she repeated softly and watched the tightening of the corners of Iain's mouth, the hard set of his shoulders and the way his muscles flexed involuntarily under the wet patch.

"Of course," he said. "I'll call when I know more."

He hesitated for just a second longer, but made no other argument. He did stall a little when he went to change his shirt and managed to pass Pearce by the living room door, but he said nothing even so.

Heather settled herself on the large couch in the living room, still sipping a second espresso.

Pearce strode in with a subdued swagger, his steps were a little heavier than he might have liked and he looked like the last time he'd slept had been during his involuntary stay at Holy Well. He'd changed the patch on his neck, though, so at least he was somewhat taking care of himself.

"I was certain you'd bring me Vanna's head," Heather said, too lightly and gestured for Pearce to sit. He glanced around the room for just a second, than picked a leather armchair, draped his arms over the sides and crossed his legs at the ankles.

"Maybe next time," he said.

"So what _did_ you bring?" she asked.

Unexpectedly, Pearce allowed himself to show a moment of weakness. He stroked stiff fingers across his forehead and gave a low sigh.

He said, "Do you think I could have a coffee?"

He was noticeably trying to sound less abrasive as normal, despite the hard grate of his voice.

Heather smiled a little, arched her brows but said nothing.

"Of course," she said pleasantly and got up.

She used the chance to regard him unobserved from the open doorway of the kitchen, the sharp profile of his face blurring against the bright blue sky outside. He'd pulled his phone back out, but wasn't looking at it.

The coffee maker hissed, drew her attention away from him.

She took the coffee back to the living room, handed him the cup and took her second one with her back to where she'd sat before.

"You promised me Bratva," she said. "You'd said you'd have a way to track them."

Pearce took a long moment before he answered, preferring to savour the coffee, long fingers wrapped around the cup as if he needed to soak up the heat, but his expression remained hard.

"We'll only have a 24 hour window," he said. "I can patch ctOS temporarily to make the Russians' masked phones visible. By then, you're people need to be ready to move, but without tipping off the ones who're affected by the Digital Trip."

"You're sure about the Trip?"

"I looked it over," Pearce said. "You know what Bellwether is. A prediction algorithm that feeds you specific information to change your mind about something."

"Naturally," she said as neutrally as possible. It had been part of Lucky's arsenal, but almost no one even within the family had known about it. Heather's understanding of it was assembled from a multitude of different pieces of information, from what her sources at Blume revealed and what her hackers could glean in addition to the things released on SystemLeaks. She knew what it was, but Pearce's role and connection to it was nothing but guesswork.

"Well, Bellwether doesn't work on people like Club members, or Fixer or anyone conscious of their digital footprint. It doesn't have enough reliable input to work with and no good delivery system for its manipulation."

"But that Trip does?"

"It puts people in a scenario very similar to Chicago today, but with the aesthetic of Capone's Chicago so it's not too obvious. It learns the players' responses and alters its storyline to change people's perception of events. They'll end up interpreting real life events based on what they saw. That's what King did. When I talked to him, he was absolutely convinced the Club was fated to go down. I guess your 'conversation' with him went the same way."

Heather only nodded. Nothing useful had come from King, but Pearce's description hit close.

"And it works on everyone?"

Pearce tensed his lips dubiously. "Probably not. Not everyone who goes through the entire storyline will really turn on you, but there's a risk. Of the people you select to move against Bratva, the best way would be if they'd never even tried."

"How many people are we talking about here?" she asked, thinking about Alderman Lee and the fact that the information backing her into a corner could've come from someone only loosely associated with the Club.

"I can't say. The Trip's just a piece of freeware, anyone could download it and give it a ride."

Heather tapped her fingers against her cup. "How long?"

"About a week until everyone's checked out. Plus whatever preparation time you need."

"That's too long," she said instantly, even without looking at the details. She was bleeding money from a dozen holes in her businesses, they were being attacked on all angles, legal and illegal. All she was still able to do was keep up appearances to anyone far enough way from the hurricane to not feel the breeze. Money itself wasn't the biggest concern yet, the Quinns had deep pockets, not all of it easily or quickly accessible to either authorities or rivals, but nothing of this was going to be cheap by the end. Part of her was starting to wish for Grisha to finally make a move, attack her directly, storm her condo and tear her apart. It'd be good to at least _see_ the enemy.

"Could I try it? The Trip, I mean," she asked. "Or is it too dangerous?"

She couldn't read in his carefully impassive face and his bleached silence. She almost flinched when he suddenly moved, even though it was just a small gesture, pulling his phone from his pocket.

"You'll need earplug or headphones," he said, gaze cast down on his phone, thumb brushing across the screen.

She went to get them, slipped the headphone over her still damp hair and let them rest around her neck. Pearce held his phone out toward her and she took it, but then hesitated.

"I've never done it," she said. "What's it like?"

"Like a trip," he said, shrugged with a small smile. "Like a video game. Just go with the flow. I've set it to kick you out after an hour, but that's just a precaution."

On the phone, she saw the image of a stylised Chicago skyline and the invitingly flickering button labelled 'start'.

She settled back on the couch, punched a cushion into shape against her back and then stretched her legs out comfortably. She passed a long glance over Pearce, couldn't help wondering what he was planning and whether she was letting him set her up for something even worse than the Russians, but she couldn't read him at all.

She hit the button and leaned back. There was a second in which nothing happened at all, just an odd feeling at the back of her throat where the sound was before she could finally hear it. She knew she tensed up in surprise.

Pearce said, "Close your eyes."

And she was dragged under.

* * *

Riding shotgun in a shaking classic car with the oddly feeble weight of an old-school machine gun in her hands, Heather began to dread the moment when the app would eject her. Up until then, she'd almost forgotten about the real world, submerged within the visions of her own brain. 

In the end, it was far gentler than anything she had expected. It wasn't like being dumped into ice-water, a brutal moment of transition from fantasy into reality. Instead, she became gradually aware of her own body, lying relaxed on the couch, cosy and warm and safe. Unmade faded away gently, became washed out when it had been solidly, brightly _real_ to her own mind just a few moments ago.

The dark behind her eyes closed out the vision and she took a deep breath, taking another second to enjoy what lingered of the feeling. Even without any added persuasive power, she understood what made people want to experience this sort of thing, complete oblivion from the rest of the world. A drug you didn't have to buy at a street-corner but could just download off somewhere like a pirated blockbuster.

Contrary to her expectation, Pearce was not glowering down at her when she opened her eyes and for a moment she wondered if he'd just left. He could've purged his phone, she supposed, if he feared to leave it in her hands like this. But when she sat up, she spotted him through the glass of the closed door to the terrace.

He leaned on the balustrade, looking out over the city, smoking a cigarette.

Heather sat up, stretched her arms out over her head and flexed her neck, then got up and checked her own phone, but Iain hadn't called yet, but she hadn't expected him to get an answer so quickly. She scrolled through other missed calls and messages, looking for anything that'd need her immediate attention, but nothing stood out.

She walked outside, quietly on still bare feet. She saw Pearce make a slight move with his head, acknowledging her, but he didn't turn around or say anything.

The longer this odd partnership lasted, the less sense it seemed to make in many ways. Her impression of him had undergone a rapid change. From unpredictable loose cannon whose capabilities she couldn't judge to someone down for the count against enemies he couldn't defeat on his own. The tired-looking man who'd walked into her condo just this morning, now smoking on her terrace as if nothing had happened. A dangerous predator, but a wounded one.

Whether there was a way for her to use that to tie him down, tie him to herself and the Club in a way that meant they'd all be safe from him once this was over was an entirely different question.

She placed a hand on his arm, as she stepped close, waiting for him to flinch or at least shrug away. He didn't, though he turned his head to look at her. An empty bottle of coke, the pack of cigarettes and a scratched-up lighter were on the balustrade next to his elbow.

"How was it?" he asked with thin sarcasm.

"Compelling," she said honestly. "But it's just a story."

The corners of his mouth twitched into a slight smile. "That's what you're supposed to think."

He took a drag off the cigarette, let his gaze drift away from her again and over the cityscape. He still hadn't shrugged her off and she'd felt no tension from the muscles in his arm under her touch. She slipped her hand up, just a light caress, then folded her fingers over his shoulder. She wouldn't be able to physically move him unless he let, so when he let himself be turned towards her she took it as a good sign.

Expression composed, he met her gaze, expectant, still a little amused, but she didn't care if he expected her move or not, all she cared about was his reaction. She slid her hand up along the side of his neck, the uninjured side, so she could get grip him harshly, tugging his head down towards her. She only brushed her lips over his, still expecting him to draw back and mock her for her blatant attempt, but he clearly wasn't quite the same man he'd been a year ago.

This time he responded, parted his dry lips willingly against her. The taste of coke lingered on his sliding tongue, acrid harshness of smoke to complement the slowly mounting fervour of the kiss.

Although he didn't shift his body towards her more, it was she who pulled back first, hard push of her thumb against the artery at his neck before she turned it into a caress, pulling her head back far enough to see his face again.

He seemed mildly puzzled, not unaffected, still passive.

"Why?" he asked.

 _To see how far you'd let me go,_ she thought, but she didn't want to give the game away.

She said, "Because I'm still curious."

She let her hand drop away from him finally, carefully stepped away and returned her stance into a more professional demeanour.

"Find me the traitors," she said, meticulously making it sound like a request and an order at the same time. "Find me Bratva, and I'll come up with a plan that sends the right message all the way back to Russia."

Watching her, Pearce took a last drag off the cigarette, then dumped the stub into the bottle — some remnant coke hissed — and stood up straight, suddenly looking taller and more alert.

She didn't like having to go on like this for another week, with nothing to really combat this insidious disintegration of her organisation. Every hour, every _minute_ something else was falling apart. The investigation against Lee, the betrayal of Vanna, the control she'd already lost over the enforcers and other muscle… The gangs were getting wise to it, too, already moving into her territory, be it drugs or girls or even just generally disrespectful behaviour towards the Club and its members.

"I have work to do," she said as she walked away, keeping him in sight from the corners of her eyes without letting him know.

He said nothing, though, not even mockery or that odd apparition of humour he'd briefly shown. She thought they'd made some progress, however. The bill was going to come due and he was well-known for his taste for retaliation, she thought she'd have something for him to do once this was over. 

The moment he was through the door, she picked up her phone and opened her HAUM app. It was, so to speak, the advanced version of what usually was distributed to smart home owners. HAUM didn't run just single homes, it also controlled the surveillance infrastructure of the high-rise and Heather had access to it.

The cameras picked up Pearce's trail and although the image was scrambled again, it only served as confirmation that she was looking at the right person. 

She put the camera feed on the television screen in the bedroom, where she could easily see it through the open door of her walk-in closet while she picked out her clothes for the day.

Unlike the use of a fake ID, this way prevented anyone watching from exactly observing what Pearce was doing and it fooled automatised system somewhat better, but a human observer might still glean something from it.

For one, Pearce didn't leave immediately. He rode the elevator only halfway down to where a small supermarket and café were housed inside the hi-rise. He shopped for something, a cup or a bottle, judging from his general posture, then strode over to a bar table.

She wondered if he had access to logs from her session in Unmade, what it'd tell him about her. She knew she'd taken to the role of mob assassin like a fish to water, even if it was within a virtual reality. She supposed it said nothing good about her, about the working class girl from Glasswood. There must be something in her that made her excel at a life of crime, no matter the circumstances. It wasn't even just fancy, her father had seen it, too, and not particularly minded because he himself had been a man of flexible morals.

She tossed her chosen clothes over her shoulder at the bed, then turned and walked out, letting the bathrobe slip to the floor on the way to the bathroom. She glanced up to watch the image distortion walk out of frame only to reappear as the camera switched. Pearce had walked to the elevator and got in.

The drop-down view from inside the elevator was even more disorienting, but it seemed like Pearce was alone and the elevator didn't stop on the way down, Heather supposed he'd overridden the other call buttons. She arched her brows at the observation, he hid the true extend of how self-serving he was, she thought, but it might actually be a weakness she could work with.

She was about to turn away when suddenly the video cut out. A dozen possibilities ran through her head, one after the other, of what could be causing it. Pearce himself? The obvious answer, but what she'd seen of his posture hadn't indicated he was up to anything.

It could be just a regular outage, a bug or error in the system without any malicious intent, but she wasn't going to take that chance. She tried switching to other cameras, but they were all unresponsive, so she assumed the surveillance had gone down in the entire building.

She tried calling Pearce, but only got voicemail.

She called the Sentris security manager, a military veteran named Lloyds who still liked to be referred to by his title of 'Captain'. 

"What is going on?"

 _"Mrs. Quinn?"_ he sounded only mildly surprised to have her on the phone. Good, she liked people who could adapt. _"We lost network access, but we don't…"_

And the connection went down as well. The phone had no carrier. These were definitely too many coincidences for her peace of mind.

"Gonzalez!" she called as she stepped into the hallway. She'd dismissed most of her bodyguards after Pearce uncovered the nature of the Digital Trip. Even if they'd been loyal so far, they could've been turned at any time since. D'Souza had checked out Gonzalez and some of her other bodyguards, but she was down to just one person to watch her back.

Gonzalez was a small, wiry man who didn't look like much, but could beat someone twice his size to a pulp. Heather had seen him do it, all of it without any apparent facial expression or physical exertion.

He stood up and gave her an attentive look.

"Is something wrong?" he asked.

"Yes, I can't get Lloyds on the line and surveillance is down."

"I'll check in," Gonzalez offered. "Or do you want me to stay?"

Heather ran the scenarios through her head again.

The basement garage was the easiest access route. Going in through the lobby or another ground floor entrance in broad daylight carried a risk of an unknown number of witnesses ruining what might well be a surprise attack.

"Arm yourself," she said. "Wait"

She hurried back into the bedroom while Gonzalez opened the weapon's locker in the hallway. It had been Kenneth's prestige collection, expensive high-tech he barely knew how to use, but it was an interesting talking point for the right kind of guest. And a deterrent for the wrong kind of guest, of course.

She dressed quickly, then hurried outside, waved Gonzalez to follow her and got down to the second floor, where Sentris maintained a small office. On the way down, everything remained quiet, even in the suddenly constricting space of the elevator. She kept checking her phone, but there still was no signal.

On the second floor, she passed by a Sentris security guard, fixed him with a sharp look and said, "Come."

The young man hesitated, but followed her tone as she stalked over to the office, where she spotted Lloyds standing bent forward over a desk with another man handling his landline phone and several smart phones laid out in front of him.

"Captain," Heather said as she walked in. Lloyds' gaze passed over her and gradually darkened when it took in his two people's increased armament.

"How many people do you have?" Heather asked

"Fourteen," Lloyds said. "You requested more people, but we can't reach them on their phones."

"I should've been more specific," Heather said, more to herself and after a second's pause. "You can't reach them because the phone carrier's down."

Lloyds frowned. "What's going on?"

She suspected a Bratva hit-squad was infiltrating the building through the basement garage, but she wasn't sure if Lloyds would benefit from that knowledge.

"We may be under attack," Heather said. "Send your people to the garage and be prepared for everything."

Unlike the security guard or Gonzalez, Lloyds wasn't just going to accept her orders lying down and she had neither the time nor inclination to talk him through it.

She turned on her heel, fixed the security guard again, sized up his weapons — a handgun and a taser, enough to deal with a hi-rise full of rich people and the hangers-on they tended to attract. It seemed a little feeble, but she had to work with what she had.

"Stick with me," she said as she marched to the elevator. Lloyds was a military man, he'd figure it out. Or not.

"We'll be going down to the ground floor," Heather said as she got in. "Walk the rest."

She didn't want to be stuck in case surveillance wasn't the only system that betrayed them.

Gonzalez nodded his agreement.

Looking at him, she added, "Pearce is probably still there, too."

A rare emotion flared in Gonzalez's gaze. Of course he'd seen Pearce come and leave earlier, but Heather thought it prudent to give him some warning about it.

"Uh, Pearce?" the security guard asked.

"You'll see," Gonzalez said. "Just keep your head down."

* * *

They walked into the garage mid-battle, most of Heather's fears immediately realised when she heard the distant pattering of gunshots while they were still on the stairs. 

Gonzalez shuffled her behind him and the security guard before he pushed through the door, his weapon drawn.

The lights were out, only gently illuminated arrows were still visible along the walls and on the floor, pointing towards the nearest exist, their chase lights making it harder to take stock of the area. Heather could make out the bulk of two vans blocking the way not far from the door. A body lay on the ground close to them, not moving and with a distinct patch underneath, reflecting the light wetly.

The gunshots were coming from much further away, hard, quick rapt of some uncommon gun Heather didn't recognise. But she noticed it was the only gun being used and it changed her perception of what was going on. Even if the fight had moved away from where they were, there weren't enough people around to be an attack on her. It also wouldn't make sense for the attackers not to shoot back if Pearce had engaged them. These people were holding back. They'd not come to kill. They'd come either for reconnaissance or abduction.

Keeping low behind the rows of parked cars, Heather followed Gonzalez and the security guard towards where the fighting was. By the time, the uncertain light revealed anything, the shooting had stopped and she could see the outline of several men, edging around the place, checking the gaps between cars, tension clear in their bodies even at the distanced and in the dark.

The first she saw of Pearce was a shadow springing up from even deeper black, just outside the limited range of a glowing arrow. He stepped into a man's leg so hard Heather thought she'd hear the bone break and the man choked on a shock cry, unable to steady himself before Pearce hammered his fist into his side, pulled his arm back and stabbed it into his chest. Heather hadn't seen the knife in Pearce's hand, but the motion was clear enough as was the hard wrench down, doing as much damage as possible.

The other men noticed what was going on, shouted to alert each other. Twisting away from the downed man Pearce dove back into the darkness, though the dull thuds of his footsteps revealed he was running, flanking his attackers.

Much further back than where Pearce was fighting, another source of light attracted Heather's attention. Someone had opened the door of a car and its interior light was spilling out. By it's steady glare, she saw the outlines of three men, two of them armed with assault rifles on either side of the third. It was too dark to see, but something about his stature and the bald head was familiar enough to tip her off.

Carefully, Heather tapped Gonzalez's shoulder to get his attention, leaned in close to whisper at him.

"Can you get a shot from here?" she asked.

It wasn't an elegant solution to her problem, but she wasn't going to wear herself out looking for one. If Grisha had come to her place, she'd be stupid not to try and take him out.

Gonzalez stared across the distance, then nodded slowly. He motioned at the security guard to be ready, because a shot would reveal their presence and make them a target. Drawing back from Gonzalez so as not to ruin his aim, Heather caught sight of the security guard's baffled expression. She put a hand on his arm in reassurance, because she didn't have time to argue. She'd find some settlement with him later, if his conscience were to bother him.

The window of opportunity was shrinking, though, even as Gonzalez levelled the gun and took aim, Grisha turned away and made to get into the car. Gonzalez fired, the automatic's noise chattered loudly in the garage's echo. The bullets ripped through the upper edge of the car and the door, half-open. Grisha slumped out of sight. One of his bodyguard dipped into the car after him even while the car started to move.

Gonzalez shoved her aside and ushered her on, just before the second bodyguard opened fire into their direction.

At her side, the security guard was cursing under his breath, but Heather ignored him. Feeling secure, several feet away from where she'd been, safely hunkered down by another car while Gonzalez went the other way and drew the fire, she could afford to just watch.

Watched the bodyguard go into cover, watched him and Gonzalez exchange gunshots. A car alarm began to howl, lights flashing brightly, more glare to confuse the situation.

But off to the side, where Pearce had been, she spotted only him, straightening from where he was just finished with someone slumped on the ground.

She caught a strange glint on his right hand that she couldn't identify, but it didn't look like a knife. He didn't seem bothered by the gunshots, standing out in the open like that. The chase light passed over him as he tilted his head listening, taking stock of his surrounding. He dashed to the side, was lost in the dark again, only to reappear a moment later, crossing the open space between the parking aisles. He leapt onto a car, jumped on to the next. Grisha's bodyguard noticed him, brought his gun up and fired just as Pearce kicked it out of his hands. The shots punched into the ceiling uselessly.

Pearce planted his boot into the bodyguard's face, knocked him back into a car, then dropped down over him. The bodyguard tried to curl away and gain a little space in which to collect himself. He didn't get it. Pearce was on him, punched him in the face, right in his already broken nose, levelled another punch at his stomach. The bodyguard stabbed at Pearce with his elbow, pushed himself off the car he'd be draped over, but couldn't find any momentum of his own. Pearce gripped his arm, yanked hard, swept a leg away under him and helped the man down and ran his head into a fender.

This seemed to finally take the fight out of him and he stopped defending himself.

By Heather's side, the security guard relaxed just slightly, sensing the worst was over. She saw Gonzalez stand up straight, too, over to where he'd gone to. He looked over at her, caught her nodding and advanced on where most of the fallen men lay to check if they were still any danger.

Heather got up, too, smoothed her skirt for whatever that was worth and stalked towards Pearce, the security guard trailing uncertainly after her.

Pearce picked up the Bratva bodyguard by the throat and pushed him against the car, snarling something at him. This close, Heather finally identified the handcuff at his right wrist. He must have been using the unattached cuff as a brass ring. Abduction, Heather concluded, but not of her, Grisha had been after Pearce.

"What happened?" Heather asked.

"Someone was stupid," Pearce hissed, still at the man in his hands. "Isn't that right?"

The bodyguard coughed. Blood covered his face from his demolished nose and his breathing was ragged. He brought his hands up to scramble ineffectively at Pearce's hold, but didn't answer.

"Grisha was here," Heather tried again. "Why?"

"I had a tail," Pearce grated out. "Or they were just watching you."

" _Grisha_ was here," she said. "The Bratva boss for Chicago does not tail anyone."

The bodyguard shifted in what might have been the first move for another attacked. Pearce swung the cuff back into his hand and punched it into his temple before he let him go and stood up.

Pearce's sharp gaze passed over Heather, the fight still beating behind them.

"He wanted to talk with me," Pearce said, draping a thin veneer of controlled calm over his obvious fury.

"We can't talk here," Heather said. "Lloyds' probably called the cops by now and I don't want them messing in this. How many are still alive?"

Pearce shrugged. "Were ten," was all he said, gave the bodyguard in front of him a non-too-gentle shove with his boot. "Excluding this asshole."

Heather looked across at Gonzalez, who'd come over. He twisted a gun in his hand and held it out handle first towards Pearce.

"Yours, I guess," Gonzalez said. "I can't find the baton."

Pearce took the gun without a word, only a slight inclination of his head to even acknowledge the gesture.

"How many are still alive?" Heather asked Gonzalez.

"Three dead, five in bad shape. We can move the other two."

Heather felt a sigh work itself from her throat. "I can call someone for clean-up," she said. " _When_ I can call someone. We need to get the survivors away from here."

"Where?"

"The Emmerson marina," she decided. They hadn't been using it recently and chances were good Bratva hadn't bothered about, even if they knew about it at all.

"Can you load them up?" Heather asked, looking from Gonzalez to Pearce. The latter looked like he'd much prefer to cut everyone's throat just now, rather than lug them around for any reason, but he grunted a low affirmative, bent down to the bodyguard and yanked him to his shaky feet.

The lights finally came back on, drew the scene in sudden, garish relief, the splatters of blood, the damaged and dented cars, the thin layer of concrete dust from the shots into the ceiling.

"Holy shit," the security guard gasped, bringing himself to the forefront of her considerations. "Pearce, you meant _Aiden_ Pearce. That's him!"

Pearce had already moved away and gave no indication he'd even heard the man, or if he had, he wasn't going to react to it.

Heather looked the guard over critically, now that the lights were back and she had a moment. He didn't seem too disturbed by what he'd just seen. A little confused and out of his depth, but not horrified in the least. It was going to do.

"Do you want to earn some real money?" she asked and was glad to see his face light up slowly as he realised what she was offering. 

* * *

_If you think of it as a game, or some other… juvenile… term, you're dead,_ Heather remembered Lucky saying, some Christmas afternoon years ago, reclining in an armchair by the fireplace in that erroneously called beach 'cabin' where the entire family came together for the festivities. Lucky had been a little drunk at the time, enjoying his sagely moment. Niall certainly hadn't listened, though Niall hadn't been one for playing, he hadn't understood the intricacies of a family business like theirs either. Perhaps it had taken an outsider, like Heather to really see how all the machinery had been assembled. 

It wasn't a game. It was her business and her life. It wasn't a gamble, either, not if she could make it otherwise. It wasn't playing chess or even poker. The machinery was creaking dangerous, labouring on on borrowed time.

With only a small pool of human resources to draw on, Heather left Gonzalez and Pearce to do the necessary clean-up in the garage. Trusting the security the guard could provide in the unlikely case Bratva was going to try something else so soon after their failure.

She couldn't forestall Lloyds calling the cops, because by the time she got back to the staircase, Lloyds was already there, with three of the people he'd managed to gather. She could talk him out of searching the garage before the police showed, though, which gave Pearce and Gonzalez a few more precious minutes. There was no chance any of them could cover up the incident completely, but they could obfuscate the situation to the point where the cops couldn't find anything useful.

The cops showed up, Pearce and Gonzalez were gone, the dead men carried nothing to identify them by and Profiler wasn't returning any results, either. Heather heard all of it from the detective who took her statement and who was notable suspicious about Heather's involvement.

"Are you sure you don't want a lawyer?" the detective asked.

"Do I need one?" Heather said.

"Something's going on with the Chicago South Club. Everyone knows it."

Heather bent her a crystalline smile. "Well, _I_ wouldn't know, would I? Seeing as I have no connection to the Chicago South Club."

Her lawyer did show up, though, because she wasn't stupid enough not to call him, if only so shecould keep the cops busy while he tied them up with as much red tape as he could find.

It gave her time to get back in touch with Iain and to hear how things had gone with Alderman Lee and _her_ lawyer. She'd also been a little worried about Iain. If Bratva felt they could move against Pearce or her directly, Iain certainly wasn't safe anymore either.

It was just after noon when things were starting to feel a little more under control, at least in terms of the immediate crisis.

She still had all the other concerns, most notably Victoria Vanna and her chain of legal nightclubs and illegal brothels she had been manager of. The local pimps and enforcers could maintain the daily grind for a little while longer, but she couldn't know who of them was also already working against her. And that was just the extra problem. Without oversight, she was sure most of them were already starting to pocket the money for themselves.

She called Iain and told him to check in with D'Souza and get him and the other hackers moving a little faster on checking out their people and expanding the list of who they could trust. She hung up on Iain just as the taxi came to a halt.

The security guard, Bell, now out of his Sentris uniform, was riding shotgun, trying very hard not to show he enjoyed this new role and the battlefield promotion she'd given him. She left him behind on the shore as she walked the last stretch to the marina and then flicked the remote that made the walkway turn behind her. Bell was useful for now, but she wasn't going to let him see everything just yet.

A false sense of tranquility hung around the old marina buildings, no guards anywhere, only the every watchful cameras keeping every angle covered.

Gonzalez greeted her at the door, gave her a quick sit rep and mentioned that Pearce had installed himself in the corner office.

"And our guests?" she asked.

"Bagged for now. Gave them some first aid, even. Not that they were grateful, but… we haven't done anything else. Yet."

"Hmm," she murmured, then nodded.

In hindsight, she wondered if Gonzalez's instant sympathy with Pearce was going to be a problem some time down the road. For now, she was actually glad a Club soldier had the smarts not to insist on a pissing contest he couldn't win. And if her plans for Pearce paid off, well then, it was actually a good sign.

"What about Pearce?"

"Knows his shit," Gonzalez answered. "Gotta give him that."

It wasn't quite the insightful answer she'd hoped it to be, but probably the most she could get out of Gonzalez at this point. She told him to wait and went to find Pearce in the corner office.

Although, 'office' was a somewhat hopeful term. A part of the boathouse had been partitioned off from the rest of the area using rows of tall metal shelving holding storage crates. Someone had hung up an old shower curtain across the opening as makeshift door.

The office space itself was fairly large, though mostly empty since they weren't using Emmerson anymore. A row of filing cabinets stood against the wall, looking ramshackle and hollow even though they were closed. An old map of Chicago was glued to the back of a shelf above an old leather couch. The large desk was rough, old wood. Pearce had moved the old computer off the desk and dumped it into a corner with a box of other out-dated stationery, including an old phone.

In their place, two flat-screens and a laptop occupied the desk, supported by two towers on the floor next to them, wires running between the machines, probably as a safety precaution.

Pearce was asleep on the couch. It was too short for him, so he'd hung one leg over the side, the other rested, boots still on, on the couch under him. He'd thrown an arm across his eyes.

Her shoes made small clicking sounds as she stepped around the desk to catch a look at the screens, but they were all black, though she heard the computers working.

She looked back over at Pearce, silently contemplating him. His breath had picked up just a little since she'd walked in, so no matter how willing he'd been to fall asleep in this place, it hadn't been too deep. He dropped his arm down to his stomach and flexed his back before he opened his eyes, swept his gaze across the room and at her without needing time before he could focus on.

"Maybe I should've brought coffee," she said apologetically as she took the bottle from her bag and placed it on the desk, then retrieved two plastic cups.

His gaze wandered over the bottle and he arched a brow. "Vodka?"

"Appropriate, I think," she shrugged. "It's still sealed," she added.

He took a moment before he answered, made a low sound in his throat and said, "I'm not sure, you haven't drugged me twice the same way yet, the booze is probably safe."

"There's that," she agreed lightly.

She couldn't look at him while she opened the bottle and poured each of them some generous amount of alcohol. When she looked up, Pearce had swivelled around and dropped his feet on the ground, though he was still lounging deep in the leather of the couch.

One and a half step brought her close to enough to hand him the cup and she withdrew. She pulled the desk chair towards her and sat down, crossed her legs and settled her elbow on the desk by the keyboard.

Perhaps alcohol wasn't the wisest choice, but she thought she needed to have a little break once in a while, just to keep herself functioning. And this served another purpose, Pearce wouldn't let her catch him in a truly unguarded moment, but he wasn't being nearly as abrasive as he could be, either. Some reward was in order, she thought.

"You said Grisha wanted to talk to you," she said, her opening move, vodka on her lips. "What about?"

Pearce chuckled, "Thought he could scare me off."

"They all do," Heather remarked. "Then they learn differently. But how did he know where you were? Is that going to be a problem?"

"They were just watching your place, saw me go in. Had plenty of time to get ready by the time I came out."

Heather sipped the vodka, looking into thin air somewhere between them, pretending to think. "What was his offer?"

"A slow, violent death if I don't stop supporting you."

"I think I can come up with something better," Heather said, smiling a little.

Pearce didn't say anything for a long minute. He drank. He watched her, thoughts running through his mind his expression didn't advertise.

"Does this turn you on?" Pearce asked, green eyes sickly bright.

"Not in particular," she answered, wondered at the wisdom to pursue this direction of the conversation. She didn't trust his initiative, but she was too curious where he was going with it So she said, "You're projecting."

He snorted an unimpressed laugh and didn't even deign to answer.

After another moment, he said, " _You_ kissed me."

"You _let_ me," Heather pointed out. "Do you know what I think?"

"I don't care."

"We're still talking, you do," Heather said without missing a beat. He started it, after all, and his body language didn't even hint that he was conflicted about it, relaxed in the worn leather of the couch. If anything, he was enjoying himself.

"You're lonely," Heather said.

He snorted again, shook his head a little and took a sip of vodka.

"And alone," she added. "We've seen what happens. I'm not questioning your competence. It's been years, no one's is stupid enough to. But there are always angles you can't cover. You need allies, or even friends."

"Lovers?" he asked with a mocking drawl as he emptied the cup.

"If you think of holding it against me, think again."

Carefully, he set the cup down on the armrest of the couch, rotated it between his fingers, watching the dull break of light inside the plastic, than glanced up at her with every apparent intention of keeping her hanging there for as long as he could. Heather made it a point to let her body relax just slightly in response.

But the moment skittered out when one of the computers suddenly chattered louder and the screens lit up simultaneously. A chime played and a notification popped up on the central screen.

"You broke the encryption?" she asked.

"No," he said and got up to walk over, gaze now fixed on the computers, completely dismissing their conversation. "Not that one, but I don't need to anymore. The Bratva soldiers just carried burner phones, nothing useful on them, but the bodyguard, he had a smart-watch."

He pointed at it with his chin and Heather saw it in laying on the desk.

"It's hard to hack?" she asked.

"It's not a… local… brand, never seen that kind before," he said and looked down at her almost in puzzlement.

She gave him a smile, swivelled the chair and relinquished it to him. Without a word, he sat down and pulled it close to the desk. This way, she had the option to hover behind him where he couldn't see her, so she didn't mind.

"I had to buy the decryption key, the only one on the market and it's for the wrong version. It's a good starting point, better than brute force alone."

"Smart watches," she said thoughtfully. "They log movement data."

"All smart devices do."

She settled a hand on the back of the chair and leaned forward just a little, careful not to touch him.

"But…?" she prompted. She was competent enough on a computer or a phone, but she didn't kid herself to be able to a handle on what he was doing just by watching the scroll of text and code across the screen.

"But, well," he repeated and sounded a little self-satisfied with it. "Watches are meant to work in tandem with phones. It's difficult to get remote access to the watch, if I can't see the phone it belongs to. And I'm still working on the signal masking Bratva uses. But, here's the _but,_ I don't need to hack anything remotely. I got the watch right her."

"So we know where this guy was?"

"In the last four weeks," Pearce said.

"He's Grisha's bodyguard," Heather said and straightened. "He was with him."

"He's more than that. He's his nephew. Evgeni Vedrov."

"We can use him?" she asked, letting the plan slowly take shape in her mind, only to realise what else Pearce was really telling her. She forced herself to take a steadying breath. "Does this mean we have Grisha?"

Pearce clicked his tongue. "It means we _might_ have him."

He let his chair rotate towards her, dropped his head back to look up at her, small smirk playing nearly imperceptibly across his lips. "Miguel took a shot at Grisha, didn't kill him, _but_ Bratva has other problems right now. Operation like this goes south, best choice would be to change safe-houses, but maybe they haven't figured out they're compromised yet. Evgeni bringing that watch was a mistake."

She almost missed the fact that he was suddenly on a first name basis with one of her most trusted bodyguards, but, like Bratva, she had other problems right then.

"Iain's checking in with D'Souza. He's maintaining the list of trusted people. Maybe we already have enough to move," she said. "How much time do you give us?"

Pearce wagged his head from side to side, considering. "Hard to say, I'm not an expert on Bratva."

"But you're decent judge of human nature," she offered.

He shook his head. "Bratva's your kind of nature. I don't know. But if you can make it happen tonight, I'm all for that."

It was Heather's turn fall silent in consideration. Tonight meant many unknowns at play, too much beyond her calculation and ability to predict. It wasn't a game, Lucky had been right. But sometimes it was necessary to accept a gamble, because those were the best odds you could get.

Like Lucky, like Niall, like _herself_ , Grisha had made the mistake of underestimating Pearce as a wild card in this. If he hadn't engaged him in the garage, nothing of this would've been possible and she'd still be flying nearly blind. Now all she had to do was make sure it counted.

She met his gaze and nodded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **References:** "Glasswood" is a fictional name for the existent Chicagoan neighbourhood of Mount Greenwood. 'Glas' is a gaelic word, meaning either grey or pale green, often used to describe grassy slopes, so kinda fitting for what used to be a very Irish neighbourhood. I think sometimes I overdo this entire research thing… I changed the reference in Femme Fatale. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Note:** The character of "Campbell" was renamed to "Bell" to prevent confusion with a canon character. (Dear Ubi, that's what you fucking do when naming characters!)
> 
> * * *
> 
> **(Minor) Recurring Character:** Denise Saunders appears briefly in Femme Fatale as an IT person working for Heather.   
> 

"The irony is quite striking," Grisha said, tilting his head a little in the mirror so he could see the long slice the gunshot had dragged across the side of his neck. It had a different angle than Aiden Pearce's, of course, since he'd been nearly level with the shooter and it was on the wrong side. Nevertheless, _striking._

Just behind him, Lake Michigan was dark, sprinkled with the positioning lights of ships, a lingering glow just over the horizon, where the sun had set. The wind cutting in through the partially open door had a little sting in it. He felt it was an appropriate representation of his overall mood.

"The bombs were a mistake," Artur was saying behind him. "We shouldn't have let that bitch know we were moving on her."

" _Mrs. Quinn,_ Artur," Grisha corrected gently. The mirror showed Artur narrowing his eyes, but otherwise giving no indication the — repeated — reprimand affected him at all.

"The bombs weren't the mistake. Lucille made the mistake when she got caught," Grisha said. "Otherwise, _Mrs. Quinn's_ clean energy conference would've simply fallen through and damaged her reputation. That is all."

Artur cleared his throat. "I had a guy who could've planted the bombs."

"You had a _thug_ who'd have botched the job even without the vigilante's help."

Artur had been working in Chicago for years, so Grisha was quite willing to listen to his expertise, but he suffered from a one-track mind, like so many in their profession. If he hadn't Heather Quinn and her crippled Chicago South Club wouldn't have had the run of the city for as long as she had.

Originally, he'd have been quite content not to challenge her. Lucky's loss had been felt as a ripple effect in certain circles and Niall had never quite fit his shoes. Neither, really, had Kenneth, though the Club had began to experience some better weather once he'd taken over. Or rather, since Heather Quinn had taken over and left her husband in charge of nothing at all he could've ruined.

But Heather had turned out to be weaker than her business partners could've anticipated. Perhaps it was inexperience, or lack of conviction, it didn't really matter. What mattered was that it became increasingly difficult to make business in Chicago and with the Club, with anything they were running. Even just transit of goods and other merchandise became unreliable. Too much got lost in raids or other mishaps. Too many people died and were never seen again, way past the limits of simple occupational hazard.

Grisha didn't exactly _like_ being forced out of New York, but there was nowhere in the Midwest with the vision to handle this particular place. Artur had ideas, but he was too clumsy to make them work long term. They didn't need to just take the city from the Club, they needed to run them, too, with all the special problems that brought. Whether he could return and leave Artur in charge of daily operations remained to be seen.

He had, however, always been curious what the home city of ctOS would be like, if it'd be significantly different than any of the other cities across the US running a version of Blume's smart city.

Grisha had his arrangements with Blume, even here, and he didn't expect any more meddling than in any other place. He did worry a little about the other groups active in the city. Navigating the intricacies of gang warfare wouldn't be for the faint of heart and could cause any number of unexpected problems to someone not familiar with their rules.

The hackers of DedSec were also known to defend their territory and liked to play the watch dogs where the authorities failed. All bark, though, very little bite. But they could always hire someone who had and it didn't take a lot of guts to just anonymously leak dangerous secrets. All of this, it was Artur's forte, but knowing these things and putting them to good use required very different skills.

"You know I value your input," Grisha said as he turned away from the mirror. "It's your city, after all."

He paused and tilted his head at Artur. "I'm just going to make sure it'll be _ours_."

He walked to the table and poured himself a glass of fresh lemonade from the crystal decanter, took it with him to the balcony. Artur followed in his wake, hands tucked away in his slacks.

"You should drink something," Grisha suggested. ""Something _healthy."_

"I'd rather know what we're going to do about the vigilante," Artur said.

"There has to be something he wants," Grisha said.

"Well, you value my input," Artur said, did his best not to snap. "My input on the vigilante _from the start_ was to take him down. That should've been the opening salvo."

"There was a good chance he'd be an equal opportunities player. There was a chance Unmade would work on him. There was a chance…"

"Not really," Artur mumbled. "We've been dealing with him for years. Ask anyone. I told you. The vigilante is more trouble than he's worth. He's insane, you can't reason with him."

"One man?" Grisha asked, savoured the sweet-tangy taste of the lemonade. The wind blew a first drop of rain into his face.

Even without looking at him, he knew Artur's mask was beginning to crack in exasperation. It would be unfair to keep him hanging for much longer. Grisha chuckled a little and glanced at him over his shoulder.

"Do not worry about it," he said genially. "I concede everything. You were right and I was wrong. I'll talk to Yulia. We'll get to him. Either by adding him to Unmade, or perhaps he's worth his own version. Soon enough, the entire city will be hunting him. He won't have time to play with either Heather or us anymore."

He had expected the concession to placate Artur's sour mood, but it didn't seem to impress him.

"What about getting more boots on the ground?" Artur said.

Grisha shook his head, smiling sadly. He stepped to Artur and settled a friendly hand on his broad shoulder.

"You, my friend," he said. "Have to start appreciating the beauty of it. Life made better through technology. Consider this a test run. We've had some setbacks. Lucille, the vigilante, but overall, I'd call it a success. The Chicago South Club is in ruins, and we never had to show our hand."

He gave Artur a little pat. "More boots on the ground, what for? So they can sit around getting drunk? Like your idiots downstairs?"

He let go of Artur and walked past him, back inside.

"What about Evgeni?" Artur challenged.

"Mrs. Quinn isn't stupid enough to hurt him. She'll play for time, offer an exchange. Evgeni is safe enough for now."

He refilled his glass with lemonade and started to saunter towards the stairs, but glanced back at Artur.

"Just in case I wasn't being clear, I want your men to keep a low profile. Don't engage any Club members. Don't engage the vigilante. Is that clear?"

Artur clenched his jaw hard for a second, but remembered his place. Nodding, he grated, "Of course."

"And get yourself something to drink, you're dehydrated, I'm sure that's where your attitude is coming from."

He didn't stay to find out if Artur followed the suggestion or not. Most likely, he didn't, just so he could tell himself he didn't follow _every_ order he was given. This city, Grisha thought to himself, and all its inhabitants.

The villa was spacious, more than he'd need for the few trusted people he'd brought to Chicago from New York and most of them were now installed in the ground-floor rooms, transforming it into some hacker's playground or wet dream. He liked to run neat operations like this. Artur and his men could do most of the running and gunning, but he was here holding the reigns from behind the computer screens.

His chief hacker was a tiny girl called Yulia he'd personally recruited on a rare visit to Yekaterinburg when he'd visited his uncle. It took a special kind of stupid to prey on the Brotherhood, but Yulia had thought she'd found her niche. Now she was working off her debt to him, but she didn't seem too concerned about it. At any rate, she'd never complained about being displaced to New York City and she'd be going where he could see her. The best way to make sure she didn't get stupid ideas into her head.

"How are things going?" Grisha asked as he walked into what used to be the living room.

A wall of screens allowed a spectacular survey of the situation, but Grisha liked to hear it spoken. So much data could be easily misinterpreted and he wanted everyone on the same page.

"So, I think we're pretty close to critical mass," Yulia said.

Critical mass would be when the Chicago South Club started eating into itself without any additional outside input. By that point, nothing Heather could do would save her organisation anymore, because she had ran out of resources to keep things functioning. Be it manpower, or money or connections, they were all being eroded by the minute. Eventually things would simply collapse.

"What does pretty close mean exactly?"

"Five days?" Yulia said, took her attention away from him to the screen of the laptop in front of her. She typed a few things and the overview changed. The lights and lines crossing Chicago turned into a new pattern as Yulia turned off irrelevant information. "Maybe a week," Yulia added.

"What am I supposed to see?" Grisha asked, watching the screen and taking a sip off the lemonade.

"These are known Club soldiers," Yulia said and dots lit up in red. "And these are close associates, lawyers, bankers, managers and the like."

Blue dots lit up.

"And these are all the ones we can confirm have been affected by Unmade."

A wave of bright orange rushed over the map and replaced the red and blue.

"It's 77.3 %," Yulia said. "I can show you all the spots where the authorities have moved, if you like. We're also seeing some initiative from people, we don't even have to contact and talk to them, they just act on their own. I don't like snitches anymore than the next guy, but in this case, I'm making an exception."

She finished with a self-satisfied grin and a shove that made her chair rotate all the way around once in typical impertinence.

One of the other hacker's made a noise in his throat that attracted Grisha's attention, unsure if it was surprise or confusion. Most likely both and most likely not good news.

Grisha looked in the young man's direction, saw him focussed on the screen. In the corner of the screen, several red signals had flared up.

"Uh, we've lost access to the cameras by the north-western garden wall," the hacker said. "The guards' trackers are down, too."

"Could this be just a bug?" Grisha asked, because it always paid to be precise in situations like this. It led to fewer misunderstandings down the road.

"It could…" the hacker started, but he didn't seem convinced and Yulia had found some semblance of professionalism, concentrating on her own screen. Rapidly, she opened several windows, arranged them across her screen. Grisha saw different data sets in each window, one looked like a log, others were just programme code, one was an input console for Yulia to type in.

"It's… not," Yulia said. "I mean, we've repelled several attempts to hack in since we're here. It's not like we're invisible, we're just well-hidden."

"And?" Grisha prompted. From the corner of his eyes, he spotted Artur coming into the room, holding a barely half-full glass of lemonade. Grisha motioned him over, but said nothing.

"Someone's trying to hijack local surveillance."

"What you know," Grisha remarked to himself. "They've actually found us."

Somewhat unhappier than him, Yulia nodded vigorously, fingers flying across the keyboard. Status windows opened and were dismissed, too fast for Grisha's amateur knowledge to follow.

One of the other hackers cursed, balled his fist up and punched the table. In front of them, the wall of screens turned black. Then, the entire space filled with the feed of just one surveillance camera. The timestamp in the corner revealed that it was live and showed the northwestern garden wall. By the light of a lamp, the two bodies were clearly outlined on the gravel path, wet pools around them leaving no question as to whether they were ever going to get back up again.

"We're under attack," Artur stated, put the glass away and fingered his earplug into place, immediately sending out an alert to all armed personnel on the ground.

He then fixed on Grisha. "Do you want me to call for backup?"

Before Grisha could even answer, the view on the screen changed, the fullscreen view split into an eight on eight grid, each another camera feed, but all from the villa and the garden and the beach around it. In the cameras, too many to see everything at once, Grisha instinctively focussed where he spotted the distinctive shapes of armed men. They came across the wall, through the front gate that opened to them and allowed an unmarked van to drive right to the front door and spill more armed men into the semi-darkness of the well-lit villa's exterior.

Artur's alert had already brought their own soldiers to bear, but the attackers moved with preternatural precision. They fired their guns without properly looking or taking time to aim, yet each hit the target perfectly. Unprotected faces and limbs and throats. Grisha had to watch as a Bratva soldier carefully edged around a corner, only to have someone appear seemingly out of nowhere, fire twice into his legs and then into the back of his head when he buckled.

Artur had reached his own decision and was frantically calling his backup in, but Grisha could already tell they'd be too late and would just suffer the same fate, being picked off one by one as they arrived.

They weren't moving into the house and there was gunfire from upstairs, where the guards had opened fire from windows and balconies. Grisha saw none of the shots connect on the screens, the attackers just taking cover behind heavy planters or parked cars in the driveway.

Several of Artur's men came into the room and took up positions along the doors and windows, guns ready.

Grisha put a hand to Yulia's shoulder to catch her attention. She was clearly still trying to regain control of the system and it wasn't working, but even so, Grisha doubted she could do it fast enough to allow them to turn things around

"Can you trace whoever's watching us?"

Grisha glanced over the camera feeds. It wasn't necessary to let them see this, it was an intimidation tactic, making Grisha bear witness without having to do anything about it.

Yulia hesitated. "You want me to?" she asked, but closed out of some of her windows and opened others.

"Yes," Grisha said, stood away from her to let her work and looked at Artur.

"Call off your backup," he said. "No point. Have them stand-by for a location."

As he heard Artur comply and relay the order, something else slithered into Grisha's awareness. He took a step away from Yulia and turned on one heel in a tight half-circle, gaze tracing the upper edges of the room until he spotted what he'd been looking for.

"Give me your gun, Artur," he said and held his hand out without looking at the other man. Artur put the gun in his hand and Grisha brought it around, aimed and shot down the fire-alarm.

* * *

"Fuuuck," D'Souza muttered leaning to the side to catch a glimpse of the screens Pearce had lined up in front of him. They were all set up in the old marina, but now with computer equipment filling most of the storage space with haphazard wires connecting the computers and servers, with generators to power them so as not to make the draw on the power grid cause an alert to go up somewhere. 

Apart from Pearce and D'Souza, Heather had called in four other hackers to support her battle plan. She wanted to sent a message to Grisha and all of Bratva what it meant to take on the Chicago South Club on its own turf and since Grisha had expanded this into the areas of digital warfare, Heather thought it was only proper to respond in kind.

Gaining access to Grisha's network had turned out to be easier than expected, once Pearce knew what he was looking for and Evgeni's watch provided him with an access point he could exploit. The watch's access rights hadn't been revoked, probably because no one actually knew Evgeni had worn it in the first place and it was only superficially secured. It wasn't unusual, even for otherwise savvy people. Many smart devices slotted seemingly naturally into everyday life, they dropped off the radar quickly.

Bratva's network was well-secured against outside attacks, which was clearly what they were expected, but with the watch, Pearce never had to test their firewalls, he could already start from the inside. All he needed to do was gradually escalate his privileges until he could seize control of the programmes running the in-house surveillance and turn it against Bratva.

Heather had scraped together a dozen reliable men and bolstered their number with a few unaffiliated fixers and hit-men who were only in for the money. It was a comparatively low number to canvas such a large area quickly. The villa Bratva occupied and the garden were large, but Bratva's own paranoia meant there were few blind-spots.

Pearce and the other hackers then simply guided the Club soldiers, omniscient eyes, from which the Bratva soldiers couldn't hide.

"They're tracing us," Denise Saunders said. As the Quinns' community manager, Denise only rarely got dragged into the underbelly of the business, but Pearce had looked a little closer into her private affairs since encountering her a year ago. Crime and criminals fascinated her a lot more than she liked to admit to herself.

Pearce picked up the input data to check. He passed quick glance over the others, assessing how busy they were with guiding the Club soldiers.

"Put up a fight," he told Saunders. "But not too hard."

"Are you _sure_ they can't really track us?" D'Souza asked.

"Well, you set it up, you tell me," Pearce shrugged, watched his own screen, flipped the mic back on and said, "Two men, second story windows on the left. Left guy's reloading… done… now."

The moment the leftmost Bratva soldier leaned out of cover, only for a bullet to punch him in the face.

The fight was nearly done, anyway. Without direct access to Grisha and his actual orders, Pearce could only surmise he was calling his remaining men back into the house. He should be devising his exit strategy by now. Pearce switched the video feeds Grisha was seeing, phased them in slowly so as not to tip him off. To Grisha, it would look like the Club soldiers were beginning to surround the house, pressing against the front and sides, but leaving the beach itself empty. Pearce considered sending a few soldiers around back anyway, to make it more convincing, but he didn't need it.

"They got a trace," Saunders announced. "They know where we are… I mean, they think they know."

"Yeah, unless we're only thinking that they're thinking they got us," D'Souza mused. "And in fact, they only pretended to fall for the trap and are, in fact, on the way here."

Pearce felt a growl in his throat, briefly amused himself by wondering if he felt like protecting this lot, if D'Souza's concerns paid off. He said nothing, though, but punched a command into his computer and put up another live feed for them all to see. It showed a truck parked on an abandoned lot, next to a crumbling wall on the other end of the city. He widened the view by jumping to another traffic camera, encompassing the streets leading to the lot.

Several of the Bratva computers logged off from the network, presumably because they were portable and Grisha had given the retreat order. Pearce switched to a camera on the pier, turned it back toward the villa.

There was a pool and sun-deck at the back of the villa, separated from the beach by tall rose hedges. A path emerged from between them, splitting off to lead down to the beach, while the rest turned into a long, narrow pier stretching out across the water, where Grisha's yacht was moored.

Where also Heather had moved in, although only with two smaller boats, with just Gonzalez, Bell and Iain as backup. It was a risky move on her part, but Pearce hadn't been surprised when she suggested it.

Only few lamps were on along the pier, bathing the path in darkness, because the camera had no night-vision capability. It was just enough to see Grisha's group come down from the villa and walk briskly for the yacht. Their advance was protected by the remaining armed men, their rifles providing their own distinct outlines in the dark.

Pearce observed the ripple effect when Grisha noticed the people standing on the pier and his group slowed down, trying to gauge the situation.

Pearce decided to help him out, seized control of the yacht and switched it's exterior lights on, it was more than enough to illuminate Heather and her small entourage, as well as the handcuffed form of Evgeni Vedrov.

Grisha waved his men to stand down, waited a moment to give them a chance to visibly relax. He walked slowly towards Heather, arms spread out in a placating gesture, giving her a bright smile.

"Mrs. Quinn," he greeted her, making a show of unconcerned joviality, an unexpected meeting between pleasant acquaintances. "What strange circumstances, wouldn't you say?"

The white light lent Heather's porcelain pale face no hint of warmth or softness. Sharp gaze like a bird-of-prey's, head haughty and high, watching his approach. He'd never been sure if she really had the courage or if she just pretended so well to have it. She stepped forward without hesitation.

"I'm disappointed," Heather remarked, matching his tone perfectly. "You visit my city and then I have to watch you stumble through like an idiot. You could've talked to me, if there was something you needed. A guide, perhaps. Chicago can be so dangerous if you don't know the way."

"To me, it seemed like you yourself were lost," Grisha said. "Our business with you in this city has suffered. Surely you understand we cannot allow that situation to continue."

Heather laughed, the rippling sound of white-water. "You can't handle this city," she said. "You can't even handle just the Club when it's at its weakest."

Grisha watched, still smiling. "I underestimated the scope of the operation," he said.

Just behind him, Artur made a quiet sound, Grisha assuming it was vindication, but he had no time to deal with it now.

Heather said, "I have an offer for you."

Grisha chuckled. "It seems I'm not in a position not to listen."

"You'll like it," she said lightly. "I'm letting you go. You take your men, your hackers — minus the stuff they carry — and you ran back to New York with your tail between your legs. We continue to do business like we always have. But Bratva is no longer welcome in Chicago. If you come back, even one of you, I'll know and I'll find you and then I'll do terrible things to you."

"Surely business people need to travel."

On the other feed, Pearce spotted two Bratva cars parking a safe distance away from the truck. Armed men got out and circled the vehicle.

To Heather, Pearce said, "You need another minute."

Heather's hard glance didn't move. With a haughty tilt of her head, she turned away and walked a few steps back, looked Evgeni over as if she was considering something, then turned back, smiled at Grisha, then walked towards him.

"Surely," she echoed mockingly. "Surely you don't understand what's happening. You tried to take the Club down, you tried to take _me_ down. And you failed. Spectacularly. You should grovel, not make demands."

"Good business relations are hardly demands," Grisha pointed out. If the razor-edge of the situation was getting to him, he was too experienced to show it. The congenial mask stayed on, even if he didn't pretend it was anything _other_ than a mask.

The Bratva soldiers were slowly closing in on the truck.

"Now," Pearce announced. He felt the attention of the other hackers on the camera feeds as well, now that they had the time to watch.

Heather pulled her phone from the pocket of her fashionable leather jacket. Pearce snatched control of it from her, saw the tiny hesitation when she noticed and had to continue as if nothing had happened. Pearce put up a live stream from the truck. He'd have preferred to have a few seconds of buffer, but he didn't know how long Heather could stall without ruining the effect of her performance.

"You think you can still strike at me," Heather said and turned the phone in her hand to hold it out towards Grisha.

He tracked his gaze down from her face with slow deliberation, frowned a little.

She said, "You only see what I let you see."

The small screen of the phone diminished the colossal fireball that consumed the truck, the nearby, crumbling building and all the men around it. There was no sound, but that made things more eerie, not less.

Grisha looked back up at Heather. The girl right behind him, with a pile of laptops clutched to her chest, fidgeted in surprise.

"I liked your trick with the Digital Trip," Heather said, lowered the phone and pocketed it as if it had been nothing. "That was perfidious, but you forgot where you are. There's no trick you can hide in this city. And it's my city. Chicago belongs to the Chicago South Club. And the Chicago South Club belongs to me."

Grisha's expression hardened gradually, he must be aware of how exposed he was, that even if he had other assets in play, he couldn't bring them to the table right then and Heather didn't need to let him go. Bratva would still do business with her if she killed him. Oh, there would be some bad blood for a while, more deaths on both sides, but none of it would safe Grisha's own life. However, it mattered only if he cared about his life at all.

"This city," Grisha said, shaking his head in mock sadness. "You are all mad here."

"Says the guy from New York," Iain snorted.

"Quite so," Grisha said. He fixed his gaze on Heather. "You realise this won't stand. Even if you kill me now."

Heather's mouth tensed into a thin, hard line.

"If I'd known you'd be this dense…" she remarked, almost more to herself. With a smooth, elegant motion she drew the small revolver from its holster under her arm and stretched it out behind her.

"A little more to the right," Pearce directed. "And down."

Without breaking character, Heather shifted her hand as Pearce had said.

"Down…. Yep. You're good."

Heather kept her gaze fixed on Grisha, bright red mouth curling into a slight smile, eyes wide and unflinching. She pulled the trigger blindly and only the recoil caused a tremor in her perfect posture.

Behind Pearce, D'Souza hooted.

"In the _groin_? Ouch! That's some next level shit! Remind me not to get on her bad side."

Heather lowered the gun, but didn't put it away. Bell, who'd been holding Evgeni, let go of him to allow the man to crumple on the pier, only able to whimper in the pain and shock of it.

"Leave right now," Heather said. "Or do I need to give you a _third_ reason? A forth?"

She left the question, ill-defined, not quite rhetoric, but Grisha's narrow-eyed silence was answer enough.

Heather gestured sharply with her head. She walked straight at him in open challenge of him or his men to try their luck. On the narrow pier, neither group had much space to move and Grisha still had the advantage of superior numbers, even though Heather's men had occupied the villa by now.

Grisha held his place until the last moment, the tensed his arm, low by his side in a minimal gesture at his men to keep standing down. Carefully, they all shifted out of the way, precariously close to the edges, just enough to let Heather and her entourage through.

* * *

Heather left Iain in charge of the villa and all necessary clean-up operation. She didn't expect much useful salvage, even from the computer equipment Grisha's hackers had been unable to take. 

It wasn't comfortable to have only cameras watching Grisha's departure, but she was sure she had made her point about it. Whatever retaliatory response would follow this night, Grisha needed to run and hide first. Perhaps he even was smart enough to let her be, because taking the city from her was a war that'd just leave the both of them in the dirt. She'd have to watch for his next move, but she had gained some breathing room now. With luck, she could rebuilt and reorganise solidly before he tried anything else.

On the passenger seat, with Bell driving, Heather allowed herself to relax just a little for the first time in weeks. After running on high octane for so long, it was hard and not entirely comfortable. It was also a little premature. Even with Bratva out of the picture — or at least significantly diminished in their threat value — the work ahead of her wasn't trivial.

Her phone buzzed and took her mind off the future for now. Glancing at the phone, she watched the unknown number resolve automatically into caller ID. Or whatever trick Pearce was using to make sure her phone identified him correctly. She'd had a brief chat with Denise about using it to track Pearce, but she'd only shook her head and said she didn't understand what he was doing.

"Yes?" she answered the call.

_"You've got a tail,"_ Pearce said. _"Put me on speaker."_

Heather slipped her thumb over the button, saw the confirmation on her phone and the call notification appeared on the car's centre stack.

_"Bell,"_ Pearce said. _"You know how to drive?"_

"Well…" the man said, flexing his hands a little on the wheel. "I'm not sure what kind of driving you're after?"

Heather thought it was a fairly smart question to ask. She was staring into the rear-view and side mirrors, trying to tag whoever it was Pearce had spotted, but it wasn't easy. Too many flaring bright lights making the colour of the cars and even their type hard to identify, much less identify someone who didn't just happen to be going the same way they did on a busy downtown street.

_"Fast driving,"_ Pearce said. _"Don't hesitate and trust me."_

He was silent for a moment and the car's GPS sprang on, pasting a hovering line on the windshield.

_"You're too far away, I can't drive you remotely,"_ Pearce added. _"Too much delay."_

Bell glanced at Heather, face determined. "I can do it, don't worry."

"Okay," Heather said. "Pearce? I'd rather you make sure we get rid of whoever's on us."

_"Alright,"_ Pearce said. _"Listen, the GPS will update on the go, so be ready for that and trust it, whatever it's pointing to. Heather, do you want them dead or alive?"_

"Is it Bratva?"

_"Yeah, I intercepted a call Grisha made right after you left and…"_

"I thought you couldn't crack their signal masking?"

_"I got access to their network now,"_ Pearce pointed out, a little too sharply for her liking, tipping her off. It was true, one of the first things Iain had done was opening what remained of Bratva's network in the villa to Pearce and the other hackers. But Pearce had worked things out suspiciously quickly anyway, even with this new insight into Bratva's network infrastructure.

She could challenge him about it later, though, now she had more pressing concerns.

"Just take them down," she said. "I'm tired of dealing with Bratva."

Pearce only grunted an affirmative and said nothing, because Bell got the unvoiced hint and hit the gas and switched to the left lane. Modern HUDs were able to provide drivers with all sorts of information. Speed and speed limit, traffic lights and their timing and intersections without signal lights, the distance to other cars and how fast they were going. To anyone not used to it, it tended to be too much information at once. In fact, there was a push for simplifying HUDs as an increasing number of accidents were attributed to drivers' senses getting overloaded.

Almost immediately, Heather realised that Pearce had done more than just hack the GPS to feed it a new route, he was also suppressing all warnings and alerts that'd normally spring up for anyone going at this speed through this kind of traffic, chafing too close past the other cars. Whatever assistance systems the car had, none of them put up any fight.

It took a little while before their tail revealed itself in the chaos of the traffic and the shockwaves their sudden acceleration was causing. Traffic surveillance would pick up on their aberrant behaviour, watch them and even alert a patrol car, at least, if Pearce allowed them to be observed, which Heather rather doubted.

Eventually, she spotted the dark muscle car following their manoeuvres doggedly. She made out at least two people inside.

Following the GPS' seemingly random twists and turns, Bell slipped the car into the centre of a crossroads, emptied when all encroaching streets had been stopped by red lights. A second car pushed through the still lines of other cars, just as Bell hit the gas and took them from the crossroads.

The GPS line on the windshield flickered and abruptly changed direction, indicating a sharp right turn into an ally they had nearly already passed. Cursing, Bell hit the brake and yanked the wheel. He was too rough and the car twisted too far, stalling for barely a second. But it was enough for one of their pursuers to catch up to them. He tried to t-bone them, but Bell got the car back into motion, so the other car only hit their back fender and gave them a shove. They punched into the edge of the building by the side of the ally. Metal screamed, but the car broke free with a few lumps of crumbling plaster.

_"What are you doing?"_ Pearce sneering voice came over the speaker. _"Move."_

Bell didn't have the concentration to phrase an answer and Heather wasn't entirely sure if arguing with Pearce would be a good idea.

She stared at the other car, watched as if in slow motion, as the man in the passenger seat leaned out the open window, the distinct shape of an SMG in his hand. Sudden acceleration jolted her away from it, braced for the gunfire, her tension didn't unwind for a long second as they shot down the alley, temporary out of sight.

_"Now,"_ Pearce announced, but if it was supposed to be a warning, it was too laconic.

Something exploded just behind them, just strong enough to push the pursuing car into the wall with the dull screeching of metal. It's lights turned off suddenly and the car stalled, effectively blocking the ally for the second car. A moment later, the entire block dropped into darkness.

"What was that?" Heather asked.

_"I blew a fuze box,"_ Pearce explained with a distracted growl. _"Get it right and the surge of electricity creates a EMP. Takes a car out."_

They emerged from the alley onto a wider street. The blackout had disrupted the flow of traffic there, but it wasn't dense enough to stop them pushing through.

The GPS line flickered again, this time with a little more advance warning, took them to the right on a jammed crossroads, its signal lights blinking orange in the night. They kept driving for long enough that they left the blackouted area behind, though not the stalling traffic. Bell was forced to evade to the sidewalk twice, because some minor accident had clogged everything else up.

"Have we lost them?" Heather asked, searching for a pattern in the sweeping lights in the mirrors.

_"I don't know,"_ Pearce answered after a pause. _"They turned their phones off."_

ctOS could track plates easily and there was no reason to think Pearce didn't have access to it. However, it was an easy system to circumvent. Pearce would have to track them manually.

After a moment, she said, "Where are you taking us?"

_"Hanging you out as bait."_

"Come again?"

_"Bait. Or do you want to get off?"_

"No, if you can take them down, do it."

She gave Bell a quick look, studying his face and how concentrated he was. He'd handled himself well so far, he would remain solid for the rest of it. With all the vacancies in her organisation recently, Bell could look forward to a promising career.

Pearce made them drive randomly through the Loop, then started to guide them towards Parker Square. If Bratva was still looking for them, they'd either picked them up again, or they were too incompetent to be worth anyone's while.

_"Tagged him,"_ Pearce announced into the quiet. _"Hit the gas."_

"Yeah," Bell said as he accelerated again. The GPS lead them down into a tunnel, then sharply to the right and through the open gate of a parking garage. A small, underground parking area, quickly traversed, spitting them out back on the street on the other side. The door slammed closed behind them and the GPS suddenly vanished.

"Now what?" Bell asked. He simply kept the direction he'd been going in.

Heather arched her brows, but before she could answer, but her phone buzzed, making her glance down. The connection to Pearce had been severed just a second ago, instead, the phone had switched to a camera feed. It was clearly showing the garage they'd just come through.

Bratva had just stopped, caught in a moment of visible indecision, of what had caused the door to close and whether they should wait it out or abandon the car there. Four men were in the car.

A man stepped out from between the parked cars in the garage, indistinct on the small screen of her phone, but leaving no doubt that she was looking at Pearce. Over the noise of their car, it had been impossible to hear Pearce had been on the move as well.

Bell parked the car on the side of the road, leaving the engine humming quietly to itself.

"Can I?" Bell asked, leaning a little towards her. When she glanced up, he froze, clearly wondering if he'd presumed too much. Heather let a smile cross her face, angled the phone so Bell could watch as well.

The Bratva soldiers had either reached a decision, or seen Pearce walking towards them in the centre of the garage. They got out, their posture aggressive, but clearly unaware of who this was. The driver took several steps towards Pearce, arms out, gesturing and shouting something.

Heather watched Pearce stop for just a second, seizing them up or merely giving them — and her — space to do it to him.

Pearce wasn't setting himself up for a fight against four armed men, it turned out closer to an execution, leaving the Bratva soldiers no time to retaliate or defend. Although the Bratva soldiers realised what was happening, their body language betrayed and how they went for their guns after that first, tense, motionless instant. One could say that Pearce drew faster, but that would imply it had been a contest to start with, but no indication of it came through the unfeeling, inelegant camera feed, just Pearce's effortless speed and precision.

Pearce shot twice, the man furthest on the left and the man nearest him. The Pearce twisted back away from them, flattened his back against a concrete column and momentarily out of sight. Pearce crossed behind the pillar, shot twice more when he re-emerged. The man he'd just wounded before and the driver who'd been trying to dive into cover.

The last one had seen it and taken cover behind a column himself and for a moment nothing happened.

The man Pearce had only wounded struggled back to his feet and limped the short distance to the column Pearce was still using, pressed his back against it and turned his head this way and that, trying to ascertain which direction he should attack. He made eye contact with his comrade, nodded and took his gun up.

The other man opened fire on one side of the pillar, intending to draw Pearce's attention, while the other man threw himself around on the other side.

He ran straight into the baton. Pearce had shifted forward already, shielded somewhat from the second gunman, drawn the baton and extended it with a flick of his arm. The Bratva soldier got it in the throat, tip first, then Pearce's hand on his shoulder to stop him from tumbling back. Pearce pressed his gun to the man's temple and shot, making his head bounce against the column before he fell.

"Damn," Bell muttered to himself and Heather arched a brow at him, saying nothing.

There was a longer pause after that, the two men left standing in the garage. Pearce kept close to the column, patiently waiting. He closed the baton with by pressing it against the column, put it away and pulled his phone out instead.

Heather couldn't see the Bratva soldier and wasn't sure if he'd left his place or not, she'd been focussed on Pearce.

Movement caught her attention on the other side of the garage. The Bratva soldier was trying to sneak along the outer wall, keeping low behind parked cars. She wasn't sure if he was trying to flee or just looking for a way to flank Pearce.

Pearce continued to look down on his phone, tapping rapidly with his thumb. On the other end of the garage, the Bratva soldier was just visible crouched at the back of a car, leaning forward carefully to get a look at his surrounding. Only to suddenly startle and draw back to where Heather couldn't see him anymore.

In the same instant, Pearce had left his cover, gun raised, waited for another second until the Bratva soldier's head peaked over the edge of the car, then Pearce fired. The bullet cut across the top of the other man's head, pulling him from sight.

Pearce walked the rest of the way, cautious but out in the open, until he reached the car. He raised his arm again and fired. He kept his gaze turned downward for a long second before he lowered the gun and turned away, slowly making his way back.

He swiped his finger across the screen of his phone without looking at it and the feed switched off on Heather's phone.

Heather lowered the phone and said, "Drive back."

Bell nodded and kicked the car back into gear, turning them around.

the garage door remained closed when they approached, so Heather had Bell take her around and stop by the entrance to the stairwell.

"Wait here," she told Bell as she got out. She made a note of how he didn't ask her to confirm the order, assuming she knew what she was doing. Also trusting Pearce, she added to herself, but it seemed a suspiciously widespread attitude in the Club. But perhaps it wasn't so much trusting him as it was trusting in his MO, which Heather herself had committed to.

She walked down the stairs, idly wondering how Pearce had insured no random citizen would do the same thing, wanting to pick up their cars.

The metal door offered little resistance as she pushed through, but fell closed behind her with loud finality.

Pearce leaned against the hood of the Bratva soldiers' car, their phones laid out in front of him and his own in his hand. An unlit cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth.

He glanced up when he heard the door, watched her as she made her way across, letting her gaze wander across the four dead men.

"Well done," she said. "Thank you."

Without changing his stony expression, he patted down the side of his lightweight jacket on one side, then the other. He gave no answer, just watched her pensively, until he pulled a lighter from his pocket.

"You don't smoke," she observed.

"I quit," he said and lit up, puffing a little cloud of acrid smoke between them, veiling his expression from her.

"Do you still want to kill me?" she asked very gently.

Pearce snorted a mirthless laugh in answer. He rested the hand with his phone on his thigh loosely. The brightly lit screen darkened abruptly.

"I know you started out hating this," she continued. "But it turned out very fruitful. Bratva would've ruined the city in ways I cannot imagine. Even with their toys, the turf wars would've gone on for weeks. Guerilla warfare in the streets. Bratva moving against the Wards, trying to subdue the gangs. Can you imagine how many innocents it would've taken before it was over?"

He still didn't answer and his face was carefully passive, making it impossible to know if he was contemplating her scenario at all and whether he was drawing the conclusions she wanted him to draw.

"Can the effect of Unmade be reversed?"

At least he gave an answer this time. He said, "I don't know."

"Can you make changes to it?" she asked, keeping her voice as low as before, trying not to tip him off.

"Brainwashing _for_ you, you mean?" he asked and turned his head a little more towards her. For a moment, he actually seemed to think about the possibilities of it, but then shook his head. "I wouldn't wanna try. I made modifications on Trips before, but this is out of my league."

She went down the very short list of people who might have the ability to do it and who she could trust with something as complex as this. She didn't like the result. No doubt Blume would've taken note of Unmade by now, studying it for their own benefit, but she whether she had enough strings to pull to get to their experts she didn't know.

She needed to know what would happen to the people who'd been affected by Unmade, now that their guiding hand had been removed. She supposed it would be an uphill battle to convince people to come back to her and she could never trust them completely. On the other hand, it was hard to figure out how it was substantially different to how things had been before. Someone could always plot against her at any time, plan to sell her out or betray her. It came with the territory.

"You know what I think?" she asked, allowing a little more ice into her voice. She didn't give him the opportunity t treat it like an open question and disregard it or mock her for it. She continued, "I think you understand very well how the power balance works in Chicago. There are so many groups active here. It's so much more complicated than in other places, it's so much more… fragile. All these powers, the Club and Nudle, Blume and Tidis, DedSec and all the little fixers and hackers." She paused for a moment. "The vigilante known as 'the Fox'. They all cancel each other out. It's a colossal stalemate. But there's only so much damage one of us can do before the others come down on us like a wall of bricks."

His eyebrows twitched upward just slightly. "What's the sales pitch this time?" he asked, turned the expression into a sneer. "It's a sick and corrupt system. That's all."

"It's not a sales pitch," she insisted. "I just stopped quietly consenting to your bullshit, because I need your goodwill."

She raised a long finger at him, penetrating the thin wavering wall of smoke. "You are lying to yourself and you're doing it badly. You've seen how well we work together and it harmed none of your precious little innocent people in this city. It saved a lot of them. Give me some credit."

"Yeah," he growled. "Take a trip down to Wards. Or better, work a week in one of your nightclubs. See if you like it. I'm sure you'll feel _saved."_

"Well, and yet, here you are," she said, spreading out her arms to indicate the empty garage and the dead men. "Doing nothing but showing off."

He shifted his head up, away from her a little, hint of the motion he'd have done she'd slapped him. His expression was dark. He'd taken the cigarette from his mouth a moment before, the thin line of smoke curled up from the side, too dispersed by the time it reached his face.

"You don't have to suffer," she insisted. "I won't judge."

Predictably, he snapped, "I'm not _suffering."_

Heather watched him for another moment in silence and determined she had pushed him hard enough for one night. Any more and she'd just strengthen his resolve to walk away and it was this very thing he wasn't doing. She'd considered he'd vanish without a trace the moment the immediate threat of Bratva was gone, but he'd stuck around to wait. Whether for her or just… something, she couldn't tell and it didn't matter.

"Regardless," she said. "I'm grateful. You helped me, you did a great deal more, but I can tell you don't want to hear it. But…"

She hesitated, looking for the right words, the right balance to strike. "There's a place for you here, you know? If you want it. I can promise it won't be on your conscience. I won't ask anything you don't want to do. It'll be like it is now, only better."

She held back from walking away when he stirred, levered himself to his feet and pushed his phone into the back-pocket of his jeans. With two long steps he came close to her and for a second she wasn't sure what he'd do at all. She wondered if it would be worth letting her breath stutter a little.

His hand came up, hovering against the side of her hip without touching, but hemming her in just the same. He leaned in close against her side, so his breath skimmed her ear.

He said, "I'll think about it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **_References_** (more like stealing this time around): Person of Interest for the mode of attack used against the Russians. Heather's shooting of Evgeni was inspired by a scene in Banshee. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Edit 04/May/2017:** I restored the original length sex scene. I left it out because it seemed gratious, but now it just seems a bit abrupt. Of course, the complete scene still ends a bit abruptly, but anyway... Enjoy.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Mind the time-skip.

**June 2019_**

Newly elected alderman Christian Neroni's fiancée excused herself to the bathroom before dessert arrived. He let his gaze trail after her before she vanished behind the heavy curtain splitting off direct sight to the bathrooms. Once she was gone, he let his gaze wander around the restaurant for a moment, caught the eyes of the waiter and told him to prepare two espresso for after dessert. He glanced down at his phone, not registering that an elegant, dark-haired woman had left her place at the bar and made a beeline for him.

He did, however, notice her sitting down opposite him.

"Mr. Neroni," she said. "You've not been returning my calls."

Looking up, he was faced with the razor smile of Heather Quinn, painted into her face with the same precision as her makeup. Small, cold sapphires at her ears caught the light with every small movement.

Feeling his mood sour by the second, the alderman put his phone aside with measured leisure and stapled his fingers in front of his face before he answered.

"We both know there is a reason for that," he said, paused and flicked his fingers. "You should leave now. I'm sure making a scene is not in your best interest."

"I was on good terms with your predecessor," Heather insisted, undeterred. "I'm hoping to have a similar partnership with you."

"My predecessor was corrupt, everyone knows this. She's getting exactly what she deserves."

"It had nothing to do with me," she said, no hint of insincerity in her voice or face. "The Quinns have been pillars of this community for a very long time. Cutting me off like this, well, it seems rather disrespectful."

He released his fingers so he could lean a little towards her, expression decidedly unimpressed by her argument.

"So, I'm supposed to be working with the mob because it's good, established tradition in this city? Mrs. Quinn, your family's philanthropy has been transparent for years. Frankly, I don't care if you were cleared of charges last year. Associating with you has been, and continues to be, poison."

He spotted familiar movement across the room, his fiancée returning. He snapped his gaze back to her. "It's time for you to leave," he said. "The community needs to have pillars more deserving of the claim. There're better people to have fruitful partnerships with and I will be working with them."

Heather Quinn's expression hardened and for a long second it seemed like she wouldn't move at all, struggling to maintain composure.

"Uh, who…?" Neroni's fiancée asked carefully as she stepped back to the table. "Mrs. Quinn?"

Heather turned her head towards her, found some residue of warmth to put into her smile. She got to her feet.

"I didn't mean to interrupt," she said, glancing over the alderman. "We'll talk business some other time."

She walked away, the alderman's dark glare following her while his fiancée slipped back into her seat, looking a little confused.

"What was that about?"

The alderman merely shook his head in response, watching the head of the Quinn family leave without looking back.

* * *

Pushing through the heaving crowd, Pearce wondered, somewhat sourly, if underground raves were ever going to go out of fashion. The smell of sweat and alcohol hung over the crowd, leeching the oxygen from the air, though he suspected he'd be getting high if he breathed in too deeply. Uniform beats were doing their best to get his heart out of rhythm and people kept getting in his way. 

This particular rave was taking place in a semi-abandoned warehouse and attracted a crowd of young gang-bangers and their hangers-on, the usual collection of drug pushers and other petty criminals, though it wasn't always clear if they were looking to deal or just having the night off.

Pearce finally reached his destination, where a few steps lead down to narrow door. No one paid him any attention or tried to block him. The door was unlocked, but rusty hinges offered some resistance as he pushed through. He pulled the door closed behind him, dulling the hard beat of the music to a low humming white noise inside his head.

A narrow stairway lead further down, lit only by one lonely lightbulb he had to duck past. He reached a second door on the foot of the stairs and hammered a fist none too gently on the door.

The man he was looking for, a forger who went by the name of 'Dongle', tended to use the underground rave to cover the comings and goings of his clients. The cops might keep an eye on them through a few cameras, but a couple of kids with gang affiliations dancing to bad music and taking a few drugs wasn't high in the list of priorities.

After nothing happened, Pearce knocked again.

"Hey! Custom!" he called, in case that helped. Nothing continued to happen. He smacked the flat of his hand against the side of the door where he knew the rather feeble lock was. The door shuddered open an inch grudgingly, then stalled. He put his shoulder in it, made the door finally open and he pushed through.

"Dongle?" he called. "Put the machete down, it's just me, Pearce."

The basement room beyond was large and cluttered. Computers and printers on every surface, shelves filled with tools and boxes spilling over with tangled wires. Like outside, the only source of light was another bare lightbulb, casting ugly, black shadows into the corners of the room.

The humming of the computers was the only sound, everything had a sense of abandonment and emptiness. Dongle offered an all-round carefree package for people looking to change their identity. He provided hacks to ctOS and Profiler as well as having high-class forgeries of papers and ID cards. For an extra price, he even designed an entire digital footprint which would stand up to at least casual interest.

Pearce had heard that Dongle had gone silent and if someone with Dongle's expertise did that, it usually didn't bode well. There was a chance he'd suffered collateral damage while the Club tangled with Bratva.

His phone buzzed and he pulled it out, glanced over the number and took his time. Dongle's computers didn't wake from sleep when he touched the keyboard and didn't respond to the mouse. Most likely the system needed a wake-up signal from Dongle to respond. Pearce ran his network on a similar precaution.

His phone continued to buzz and he finally picked up.

"What is it?"

_"Aiden, I just had a chat with alderman Neroni,"_ Heather's voice came on, giving no indication that he'd kept her waiting. _"Lee's successor."_

_"_ Yeah?"

He left the computers for now and looked around, assessed the mess for where Dongle might be hiding his spare remote.

_"He thinks he won't need to deal with me. I've been trying to go about this diplomatically for long enough. He doesn't want to listen."_

"What do you want me to do?"

He heard traffic and people through the phone, she had to be somewhere outside, probably downtown, Mad Mile or the Loop. Mad Mile, most likely, if she'd had a chat with Neroni.

_"He's a politician, I'm sure he's got secrets he doesn't want to get out."_

"Neroni?" he asked. "You have someone on him, don't you?"

One of the shelves seemed slightly neater than the others, somewhat close to the centre of the room with a thinner layer of dust. Pearce walked over and began going through the drawers.

_"Yes, but nothing's moving forward. Neroni is squeaky clean for all I know. He's got a temper, that's the worst I have on him right now. I can't make him talk to me with just that. I need, at least, an intern he harassed. A girl would be best."_

"Neroni doesn't harass girls," Pearce pointed out. "He doesn't have to."

_"Well, there doesn't have to be, does there?"_ Heather asked, getting a little impatient with his affected incomprehension. _"It just needs to be damning if it came out, even if he can disprove it."_

"You want me to manufacture dirt on him."

_"Well, only if you can't find any."_

Pearce didn't answer for a long minute. Partly because he'd found Dongle's stash of old phones and partly because it was just something he did with Heather. Kept her on her toes, though he had a suspicion she enjoyed it rather more than intended.

"I can check," he finally said with complete lack of commitment. He pulled out the entire drawer and took it with him to where there was more light.

Finally picking up on his distraction, Heather asked, _"Where are you?"_

"Following a lead," he said. "There's a dealer in false IDs. Sells the whole package, ctOS, Profiler, federal databases and the papers to got with it all."

_"What lead is that?"_

"This guy… he's been around the block. Someone like that doesn't go silent for no reason."

He heard the low snapping of a car door as she got in and the background noise fell away.

_"What's this guy's name? One of ours?"_

This time, he held the silence for just a heartbeat, then said, "Street-name's 'Dongle'. He's a freelancer."

_"So he wasn't targeted because he's Club. What are you thinking?"_

He chuckled dryly. _"_ It's not _all_ Club related. I'm thinking the reason Victoria Vanna doesn't show up anywhere, could be she's not with the CPD. She could be on the run. Maybe trying to join Grisha in New York. She's a big fan of his." 

_"Why would she need a false ID?"_ Heather asked. _"By the time we were coming for her, she could've been anywhere."_

She took a breath," _I don't think it really is something, but I can't stop you from wasting your time on it."_

He chuckled again, a little less dry and a little more amused.

"I get it, you want your dirty little alderman."

_"I want a lot of things,"_ Heather said. A beat. _"Are you going to be at the Merlaut later tonight?"_

He stopped with what he was doing, an old phone loosely in his hand, calculating how long it would take him to crack Dongle's system and chances were good it was just the first breadcrumb to be picked apart.

"Tomorrow afternoon?" he offered.

_"Yes,"_ she said, he heard a smile in her voice. _"I can make that work."_

* * *

Iain walked briskly into the lobby of the Merlaut, glad to be out of the sweltering heat that clung to the world even after nightfall. He took a slightly deeper breath, but without slowing his step. The receptionist nodded at him as he walked by, but he couldn't be bothered to return the gesture. Music spilled from the ballroom, just faintly. He thought it was a wedding. 

Only when he reached the surveillance room did he slow down, took off the sunglasses he's been wearing and held his face into the biometric scanner.

The door opened and Iain stepped through, snapped a hand up to prevent the door from sliding closed again.

"Mr. Darcy?" the guard on duty swivelled the chair around and looked at him.

"You should take a break," Iain told him.

The guard's confusion washed visibly over his expression and it took him a second to process the order.

"I…" he started as he got up and hurriedly shoved his travel mug into his bag. "Sure, I'll just get something to eat. You'll, uh, call me when you need me?"

Iain nodded wordlessly, stepped aside to let the guard pass, then watched as the door slid closed. Focussing himself, he looked over the surveillance feeds of the hotel and all the little people scurrying around under it, blithely oblivious to being watched.

Iain rubbed a hand across his forehead in an effort to relax the muscles in his face. It wasn't working. He shook himself back into motion, sat down in the seat the security guard had just vacated and set up the laptop he'd brought, plugged it into the system and booted the programme D'Souza had written for it. Iain didn't understand the intricacies of the software, but he understood the point of it well enough.

Pearce had been using a suite in the Merlaut as temporary base for two months, ever since he'd started accepting jobs from Heather. He didn't like to give up his usual haunts, or release where he could be found when he didn't want to be found. Having a base this close was useful. Out of courtesy to Pearce, Heather had fairly publicly given orders to disable or remove all hidden surveillance from his room. He'd get rid of it, anyway, but Heather wasn't going to let an option like this slip by.

Of course, what Pearce hopefully _didn't_ know was that the surveillance had been replaced, put on a separate grid and not logged into the network. Until Iain switched everything on, Pearce had practically no way to figure out something was there. Oh, he almost certainly suspected it, but there wouldn't be anything for him to hack. Unless he'd physically searched the entire suite and covered or removed the bugs, that was, but Iain had seen the equipment and it was practically invisible to even the most expert eyes.

While the software installed the surveillance into the system, Iain glanced at his phone, the chat he had still open with Heather, though there hadn't been any new messages.

_[Now.]_

[I'm going to be late.]

[Sorry.]

How should he have known, anyway? He had other things to do. In fact, he had a dozen other things to do, as one of the few Club bosses left standing, he had more on his plate than he cared to think about. His cover was wearing thin, too. He'd never been involved with the underworld so much, he was Heather's _secretary._ He didn't do art forgery and prostitution. He didn't vet and hire fixers. At the utmost, he handled black accounts and politicians.

He looked at the laptop when it finished the installation and Iain put the surveillance feeds on the monitors on the wall in front of him. One by one, they switched to the suite. Balcony. Entrance. Bar. Bathroom. Bedroom. Iain had his own thoughts on why Pearce didn't mind housekeeping to enter the suite, but Heather didn't seem to want to hear it.

Living room television, one of the most useful tools for figuring out what people actually cared about. So far, Pearce had watched a drag race, some news reports, other sports events, but he also had a habit of just tuning into a channel and leaving it on, making drawing conclusions so much harder.

Iain was late. He wasn't sure if that was a mercy or not. The television's own camera was unresponsive, but the one hidden behind it in the wall panels provided almost the same angle of view.

_…Aiden's back flexes like a predator as he arches away just a little from the scratching edge of Heather's heel over his bare shoulder. She claws her hands into the nape of his neck, messing the strands of his hair. The sinews in her fingers stand out starkly, the tension in her arms as she drags him down…_

Clenching his jaw so hard he felt his teeth ache, Iain ripped the earplug away and tossed it roughly across the desk. He rubbed a hand down his face, eyes closed for just a second. He blinked his eyes back opened, grinding his teeth.

_… he leaves faint red imprints on the inside of her thigh from gripping her, pushing her leg back into the expensive leather of the couch. Telltale twitching of muscles under his grip. Her nails dig into his neck, bury in his skull, unrelenting._

Iain edged back in his chair, unsuccessfully looking for a more comfortable position. With a burst of frustrated energy, he gave his chair a shove to make it rotate away from them, his back to the screens and the surveillance.

That was worse. No matter what debauched thing they were doing — or not doing — his imagination kicked into overdrive the moment he wasn't looking at them anymore. And beyond that, scrabbling at the edge of his consciousness were his own memories to substitute what he wasn't seeing right now, or what he'd done his best not to hear. He knew the sounds Heather made, the way passion would take her self-control and transform it into something inexorable. Nothing was sexier than a woman who knew exactly what she wanted.

He fidgeted in his seat, murmured a curse and rotated back around, in flawless, unasked for, timing to see Pearce draw back from between Heather's legs.

_She smirks down at him lazily, too much teeth, too much glow in her eyes. She says…_

… something. Iain considered scrambling for the earplug, but it was just a reflex he didn't indulge it. He doubted she said anything he wanted to hear, though his fantasy supplied a million titillating options. He couldn't see Pearce's face, only watched…

_… the curious tilt of his head and the quick, impudent kiss he placed on her hip before he sits back on his heels, then slips to his feet easily, while Heather pulls both her legs up on the couch, extended them along its length and crossed them at the ankles, viciously pointed shoes prominently displayed towards where Pearce has stepped out of frame._

Heather kept talking to him, though. Short remarks or, Iain recognised her facial expression, playful orders. He wondered if she realised what Pearce was doing, if she actually understood that two played at this game and not just her. Iain had been pondering for _weeks_ how to bring it up, because she was so insistent things were under her control.

With Pearce gone or at least temporarily unseen, Iain found it harder to ignore what he was seeing. The leather couch outlined Heather's long, pale limbs perfectly, the contrast to the glossy patent leather of her shoes and their steel tips. The video resolution exposed everything, the fading imprints of hands on her thighs and hips, the heated blush down her throat and between her breasts.

_She folds her legs away, giving Pearce a little space. She says something, eyes wide on him, drinking in the sight of every shifting muscle in his well-built body. She says something to him and he tilts his head again, slight smile fading into sensuality as he reclines on the other end of the couch. She traces her gaze over him. Says something else and watches as he strokes himself with a rough twist of his wrist._

For a while, Iain forced himself to just stare at the upper left corner of the screen, rendering both Pearce and Heather as suggestive, but blurry shapes at the edge of his vision. He even managed to focus on the other video feeds on the wall, watching random people hang out in the lobby of the hotel, the dancing in the ballroom, nearly empty hallways in the upper floors.

A particularly stark shift made his attention snap back, uncomfortable reminder of why he was there at all and what he was supposed to be doing.

_Heather tosses her head forward, dark curls flying across her face. Her mouth is open, eyes closed to slits, tiny specks of brightness there, too heated to cover completely. She moves her entire body, supple skin shifting as she keeps rolling her hips._

Like this, with Heather almost completely covering her partner, it didn't matter for a little while who he was. He was just a body, someone who didn't matter, barely more than a toy. She could use him and toss him away later. There'd been enough others, Iain was the only one who'd stayed.

Iain took a ragged breath, changing his position in the chair, trying very hard not to think about his own body, stuck here in clothes that were threatening to suffocate him. He was almost grateful when that cocoon of influence over him shattered like ice-water.

_Pearce's hand on Heather's hip tightens and his other hand crawls up, picks her flying hair and yanks her back against him as he sits up, grazes his teeth along her shoulder and whispers something that makes her shudder again. He lets go of her hair and wraps the arm around her chest, fingers loosely wrapping around her throat from behind._

Iain pressed his fist into the tabletop, changed his position yet again. Gaze aimlessly wandering away from the screen again, looking for an escape route he knew he couldn't take even if he found one.

Despite the lack of audio, Iain practically heard _Heather moaning, gasping, shuddering forward. A spasm running the length of her body. Pulled loose from him, her hair falls in thick waves across her face. As she turns, she crosses through the centre of the camera lens, like she's looking at it, heated eyes and open mouth and grinning teeth._  


_ Behind her, watching her, not following, Pearce slides the condom off and throws it aside. Strokes himself hard and fast.  
_

_ With the grin still on her face, Heather's mouths 'stop' and Pearce tilts his head and smirks a little and doesn't. Heather falls on him, catches his wrists and pins them into the soft sheets, leans in to kiss him, force him back down and he lets her. She takes a hand away from his wrist, cups his face and says something, single words spaced out between licks and kisses. Her hand on his throat, where the injury scar is still visible.  _

_ He slaps her hand away, give an answer, bites her lower lip, then drops himself back, head hanging over the far edge of the bed, his face out of sight of the camera. A vibration shivers across his throat with a chuckle. _

_ Heather crawls back down over him. He strokes his free hand through her hair and she snatches him up again, pins both his wrists back to the bed by his side, swallows him down. A slow spasm tenses the muscles in his stomach downward, curls his hips towards her mouth, makes his back arch off the mattress. _

* * *

[All there.]

_[Good. Uninstall everything. Bring the drive by tomorrow.]_

[Of course.]

* * *

Each step Iain took into Heather's office was slow and measured. Streaks of sunlight cut through the blinds, painting rays full of dancing particles of dust across the room. Heather was behind her desk, legs casually up on the heavy wood, a plug in her ear and a hand hovering over the pad in her lap. 

She looked up at Iain, gave him a quick, welcoming smile and he'll never get over how genuine it was and how deep it cut. He walked the rest of the way to the desk and put the drive there.

"I don't know why you want it," he said.

She quirked an eyebrow at him. It was an expression she often gave him when he said something stupid, or when he'd failed to understand some intricate component of her plan. He wondered if part of the reason she kept him around, to the exclusion of any other lover she'd had over the years, was because he was smart enough to get things _most_ of the time.

"It'll make a good headline," she said with a shrug. " _The Vigilante in bed with the mob."_

"But that's a confession," Iain said. "And it wouldn't hurt him."

"You think so?" she asked, eyebrows still raised. "It's true, his reputation isn't as important as mine, but he's keeping a difficult balance, too. If this entire city decided to be against him, he'd be cornered within days. They'll see his hypocrisy eventually."

Iain merely shook his head and said nothing, thoughts running through his head. He hesitated, but Heather's expression was bare of rancour, though he was fairly sure she wanted the video for more than one reason. Notch in her bedpost, perhaps, fond memories to keep her warm when she was alone. He already knew it wouldn't matter to mention any of it. He'd long since understood that he loved her so much more than she ever loved him.

What he said was, "I think you're wrong about Pearce."

"Wrong?" she repeated, voice a little harder.

"Wrong," he said again, because at least he had her attention. "He's not helping you."

He took it as a good sign that she didn't immediately deny it. In fact, she seemed to be immediately thinking of incidents that supported Iain's view. She didn't like it, he could see it in her face, but she didn't dismiss it.

"Why hasn't he been able to find Victoria? What's with the shootout last week?" Iain began.

"We got a warning."

Iain waved his hand irritably. "Some vague… Bratva soldiers _might_ be doing _something_ at the port _sometime?_ Do you mean that one? _"_

A group of Bratva people had started filtering back into the city, mostly keeping a low profile and buying themselves into key positions in the port and other places they needed to rely on to distribute merchandise.

"It's not a perfect art," Heather pointed out. "You know that. And Aiden said Victoria is most certainly in a CPD safe-house. CPD is doing everything to keep him out, they have a lot of closed networks. We've ran afoul of them plenty of times, too."

Iain hesitated again, shook his head a little. "And what about the feds?" he asked. "Do we _really_ believe they're only here for some training exercise?"

Heather watched him. "It was your guy at city hall who delivered that piece of information. And D'Souza who hacked into CPD to check. Pearce's entire involvement was in providing a login. If the information isn't good, it's certainly not on him."

He knew the feds made her as nervous as they made him. They had started to come to the city a few days before. The timing alone was suspicious, but some digging had turned up a far more innocuous explanation. A quay down in Brandon Docks had recently been closed and renovated with state of the art surveillance and automation. It was slated to return to operations in a few weeks, but city hall had offered it as a training ground for a joint exercise with FBI and CPD SWAT teams. Publicity, it would serve as a show of strength in what still was one of the most crime-ridden city in the US. It also made sense that city hall was pushing for it now, the turf war with Bratva had kicked up a lot more dust than normal and law enforcement was understandably nervous.

"Look," Iain sighed. "It's a lot of little things that just don't add up. With Pearce on our side, I'm just saying, things should go a lot smoother than they actually are."

"Unmade is still an issue. We're down two thirds of reliable people."

"I know," Iain said and let his shoulders hang. "I'm just… I think you're leaning on him more than you should. And this… thing you have… I don't think it's helping."

It was the wrong thing to say, he realised it immediately. He'd inadvertently allowed her to cast all his doubts as nothing more than jealousy. She _wanted_ Pearce's change of heart to be substantial, not just a step in his own plan.

"Iain," she said. "He's not replacing you, don't worry. He's just useful."

"No," Iain said. He'd figured as much and besides, it didn't really matter, because he couldn't hold Heather unless she wanted him to anyway. "But what if he's looking to replace you?"

He watched her instinctive reaction of laughing in his face passing by without manifesting.

"Don't you think that makes more sense?" Iain asked. "I mean, I was there a lot of the time. I know all the things you said and did." His gaze passed over that damn drive again, causing an angry lump in his throat. "How great it'd be to work _for_ the Club instead of against it? You made a good point. But what if that's not enough? The third we've got left, they really like having him around and it's not just because he's not gunning for them."

For a long moment, Heather didn't react. Keeping her expression carefully neutral, she put the pad down, then took her feet back to the floor. She looked down, then picked up the drive between pointed fingers and turned it between them.

She looked back up at Iain.

"That's not going to happen, either," she said.

Heather's gaze dug into his, warning him from pursuing this particular line of questioning. He knew her well enough to notice the slight change in her expression, the way she softened the tense corners of her mouth a moment before she tilted her head back just a fraction.

"Iain…" she said, her tone a perfect balance between earnestness and gentleness. Before he could decide if he _wanted_ to be soothed in that moment, her phone buzzed and rocked itself a little across the desk.

She glanced over it and one of her eyebrows twitched upwards meaningfully.

"Gotta laugh, right?" Iain muttered and attempted to play his anger down with a dismissive shrug. Heather picked up the phone.

"Aiden?"

She listened for a moment, the flicked her thumb across the phone and held it out, letting Iain listen.

"Say that again," she told Pearce.

_"I found Vanna."_

"Took you long enough. Where is she?"

_"I was right, she tried to contact Dongle, but couldn't find him, either. But I could track her through that. She's still in the city, hiding. My guess is, she's having trouble organising a new ID without tipping the Club off. A freelancer is her only option."_

"She's still here?" Heather asked surprised. "I thought she was long gone. Or with the cops."

_"It's neither."_

"She'll have some insurance somewhere," Heather pointed out. "Killing her without getting to it would be stupid. Can you keep her alive?"

_"You want a chat?"_

An unpleasant smile threatened to break through Heather's controlled expression.

"Not exactly," she said then.

_"I get it,"_ Pearce remarked neutrally. _"I'll see what I can do."_

"Thanks," Heather said, gaze resting on Iain pensively even while she spoke to Pearce. Iain didn't know what her expression meant, whether it was for him or Pearce or Vanna.

"Do you need backup?"

_"I can call Doyle if I need anyone, but I can handle one old woman. I'll be in touch."_

He hung up, giving Heather no chance to question him further.

Iain's face must have said more than he wanted, because Heather chuckled a little, leaning back in her chair again.

"Yes, I trust him," she said. "In a matter of speaking. He's not going to let Victoria weasel her out of this. There's not going to be a deal for her. And that's good enough."

"I didn't…" Iain started, knew he sounded too defensive to make any kind of impact. He faltered when Heather's smile kept pushing down on him.

She kept him there, just watching, _calculating,_ but not entirely without feeling.

"If it really bothers you," she said and shrugged. "I'll just break if off with him."

"You got what you wanted," Iain ground out, gaze skittering to the drive he'd given her, then back up at her. Any other time, he'd have bitten back on the comment, there was nothing to gain by putting her on the spot about these things. He didn't mind if she played him, in a way, he supposed it was her way to show how much she valued him. But this was too transparent to be anything but an insult.

He almost expected her to be angry at him, but she only canted her eyebrows up.

"What else do you want me to do?"

_Don't make me watch,_ was what Iain desperately wanted to say, but the thought of making himself emotionally even more vulnerable didn't hold much appeal.

Buying time, exposing himself anyway, Iain pushed a hand through his hair and sucked in a long gulp of air.

"Just… make up your mind," he sighed. "That's all."

"I just did," she said, voice bare of any affectation for once. "You need to pay more attention."

* * *

In Pearce's estimate, Victoria Vanna had made several tactical mistakes. He was giving her a pass on her decision to desert the Club and throw her lot in with Bratva, she hadn't had so much of a choice on the matter, though he privately believed this level of brainwashing worked best on people who had doubts long before. He had a feeling Vanna suspected Heather's gambit of a year ago to get rid of many of Lucky's old guard would've got to her, too. From what he'd read about their correspondence, Vanna and Heather were on much better terms than many of the old dogs had been, who'd secretly resented Heather's power, an upstart and outsider, giving them orders like this. Vanna had had fewer issues adapting to the changed leadership, but ultimately, Heather would've ousted and replaced her with someone of _her_ choosing. 

What Vanna's mistake really had been, it was making an ill-timed and badly prepared attempt at Heather's life, showing her hand too early and being forced to flee as a result. Without her prominent position in the Club's hierarchy, Vanna didn't have a whole lot she could offer Bratva in exchange for protection. Bratva had enough people of their own to handle their girls and their nightclubs and without South Club connection, Vanna was just an elderly woman who realised most of her friends weren't picking up their phones when she called them.

One of those, someone Pearce knew she had dirt on — Vanna had made the necessary connections to buy a black market lung transplant for his son — had allowed her to stay in his North Shore holiday home. As bolt-holes went, the place was ideal. With a steady influx of tourists, comings and goings of anyone who looked the part wouldn't be suspicious to neighbours and the affluent area meant ctOS invested it's computing power into petty crimes and vandalism, not organised crime. Privately, Pearce always wondered whether that fatal flaw in the system was intentional or not.

The holiday home was housed in a four story, elegantly ornamented brick building on a quiet avenue, set back from the lake shore and its amenities.

It would have been easy for Pearce to just walk in the front door, there was no doorman and only a janitor and housekeeper on staff for the people living there. He could even have come up with some story and talk himself inside even if there'd been someone. He didn't want to give Vanna a chance to see him coming, though.

She'd carefully drawn all the blinds on the windows, trying to prevent an intrusive camera from scanning in her face and identifying her.

Pearce made a mental note to check up on what Blume's research in transmaterial scanning was doing. A couple thick curtains weren't going to make much of a difference a few years down the road. His scrambler's pixellation would eventually be resolved, too. Last time he'd looked into it, Blume had been years away from a workable system. They had things that _worked,_ but applying them city wide weren't possible, yet.

He stopped his musings as he carefully strode past the building and to its back. The dumpsters were hidden from sight by a tall, cast iron fence, pointed halberts overgrown with ivy. They even kept the stench at bay.

All the frills on the building certainly looked nice, but climbing the walls here was quite a bit easier than some artificial ones he'd seen in gyms. A simple running start gave him enough speed to scale the fence, the gaps between the points wide enough for his boot. From there, he balanced to the wall and could reach the first floor window to pull himself up, rough stone and brick more than enough grip as long as he didn't wait for gravity to catch up to him.

Although the blinds were all closed in Vanna's condo, the windows were open to allow the soft spring air to shift inside. He heard tinkling piano music through as he levered himself up to the window sill of the bedroom. Precariously poised, but secure for the moment, he listened to other sounds but got nothing.

Silently, he pulled himself up all the way and dropped through the window, landing softly on the carpeted floor of the empty bedroom. But in landing, he already spotted Vanna in the next room, her back towards the windows there with an easel in front of her. Perhaps she need the veneer of sophistication to compensate for her abysmal choice in profession, but more likely she considered herself a member of the elite, above the people they enslaved.

Victoria Vanna was small woman, slim and good-looking in her sixties, dark-skin and short white hair. She lurched to her feet when she saw him, a second of shock, immediately replaced by recognition. She dropped the brush and palette, raised her hands up as if he was holding a gun at her, though he hadn't drawn.

"Are you going to let me talk?" she asked.

"Something you've got to say?" he asked back and began to circle her slowly, watching her body tense in the realisation that any move she made, it'd bring her closer to him and there was nowhere to run. "I know all about you," he added. "I've seen your kind before."

She kept her silence for a moment, clearing trying to decide what to say and where to put her fingers.

"So you have," she said, making an decent effort to calm herself. "So I have. You work for Heather now. Is it everything you thought it would be?"

He ignored the question and its obvious attempt to rile him up. He wasn't sure what she expected to gain from it other than a swift death, though perhaps she thought it was preferable to being made another example of, like Vincent Fisher.

"You certainly weren't happy," he remarked, still circling her. He crossed past her shoulder and she turned her head, but didn't dare move her body to keep him in sight. "Was Bratva's offer so much better? Or did you just not realise you were being played?"

She didn't respond at first and he stopped pacing right behind her, forcing her to speak without seeing him. She snorted a laugh, "You think that stupid little game made me betray that bitch?"

Vanna's attempt at Heather's life predated his access to her system and the Unmade app, he hadn't been able to reconstruct everything she'd done and whether she'd even been exposed to Unmade at all.

"I think it helped," Pearce answered. "But Grisha didn't want you, either. Did he?"

He fell into motion again, back past her shoulder, gaze deliberately turned away from her. He didn't give her the chance to answer his mostly rhetoric question and said, "Why shouldn't I kill you?"

"Heather wants me alive," she pointed out.

"Then killing you would be a mercy."

"I can still be useful," Vanna insisted, her tone regaining some confidence when she felt like she was making headway, if only a little. "There's no one who knows the business like I do."

"The business," he repeated, felt the disgust crawl up his throat and form a lump. People shipped in containers, worse than cattle and with as much die-off. He was never sure if those who died early were the lucky ones.

"There's no excuse," Vanna said, picking up on his tone and making a good guess at what he was thinking. "I can't stand here and make excuses for what I do. There's no 'I'm sorry'. And I'd be lying. I made a good living on the backs of these people you seem to care so much about. I would never have been _in_ business if there weren't customers and clients for these kinds of services. That's all I can say in my defence, really. If I'm to blame, so are they. And Heather and the Club… "

He was nearly level with her left shoulder again and this time she turned around towards him, making him stop in case she attempted something.

"I don't know what you want from me," she finished, shaking her head.

He made an amused sound in his throat, gaze passing over her and he resumed his pacing.

"Lucky was begging at the end," he said, pretended to think about it and added, "Niall didn't really last long enough for that."

"Great good it them," she said after the briefest of pauses. Neither death had had any witnesses, even if it was open secret who'd killed either of them. Pearce couldn't recall if he'd ever admitted to it aloud, though. That sort of thing should be harder to say, he thought. 

Vanna watched him for another moment, her expression darkening with each step. He was at her right shoulder, slowly closing the circle again.

"What about the girls?" he asked.

"They're meat," she said without hesitation and repeated. "I make no excuses."

It had been a deliberate decision to come here without any definitive plans. He hadn't wanted the restriction. He could take her to Heather, as both women clearly wanted. Or he could take her to the cops after all, allow her a dirty deal in exchange for some nebulous greater good which might or might not manifest in the distant future. The memory of Lucky he'd woken still lingered at the back of his mind. Hearing her speak, there was a part of him who wanted her to suffer so long she forgot she didn't want to make excuses. She wasn't sorry _now,_ but there were ways to make everyone regret every single one of their life choices.

But then, would she truly regret? Or would the only thing she was sorry about be how she'd been caught?

She didn't deserve that much.

Without any preamble, he stepped close to her, gave her no time to even react. An awkward flailing of her arms was all she managed to muster, a surprised scream cut short when his hand closed around her throat. Tendons and ligaments strained under his fingers as her throat worked desperately. The first shock wore off and she realised what was happening, brought her hands up to push at his shoulders and chest, but weak and ineffective. With the right technique she might have been able to make him budge, but she either lacked the presence of mind, or she'd been neglectful in her self-defence training.

Her pointed nails sliced into the skin of his forearm, thin and painful. Hardly worth the reaction, but he didn't want to bear her marks like this. Suddenly, he tossed her aside and to the ground, letting go of her. The animal part of his mind was disappointed the slender neck hadn't snapped, but his rational self knew he'd need more strength and a better angle to accomplish that.

She dropped heavily a few feet away, coughing and retching as she tried to regain her bearing. Her feet slipped in her lack of coordination, but her eyes were wide and bloodshot on him.

He contemplated her for a long minute, watched her struggle, watched her _fear_ , waiting for the sense of relief or satisfaction to loosen the lump in his throat, but it wouldn't come.

He stepped forward, he thought he was going to kick her, but he only put his boot at the side of her hip and rolled her to her back. A bout of coughing made her curl up, but she then dropped back bonelessly when it stopped wrecking her body.

Her mouth opened and from one second to the next, he knew he couldn't hear one more word from her. He didn't want to see her face, either. He reached for her, threw her around so she was on her, put his hand on her neck and pushed her down. Used his free hand to draw his gun and press it into the back of her head, heard the sound from her throat, a scream or another empty phrase of supplication.

He'd thought he'd wanted it, but he pulled the trigger before she had the chance to even begin.

* * *

To: Heather Quinn; Iain Darcy; Gerry Mackey; _additional recipients_

From: (hidden)

Message: [no message]

Attachment: SYj3fROIQ1.image

* * *

_[I wanted her alive.]_

[Wasn't worth it.]

_[It's done.]_

_[Fine.]_

[Merlaut tonight?]

_[I'm afraid not. But keep the suite.]_

He lowered the phone, couldn't help the faint smile to push through his expression. He relaxed one leg towards the second seat and watched Mad Mile rush by outside the smudged window of the L.

Getting ditched via text, he mused. Stay classy, Pearce.

He'd expected Heather to pick Iain when he eventually worked up the courage to demand it of her. She'd sated her curiosity and whatever bond she'd thought she'd created with him. As for him… he'd need to figure out a better way to conduct personal relationships. The messy things might be arousing at first, but they always left such a stale taste the morning after. He was getting to old for that type of hangover.

His phone buzzed again, drew his attention back.

_[Need a timetable.]_

He considered for a long moment.

[Not yet. Keep your feet still.]

_[Need a timetable!]_

He thought about it, running his setup through his head, the scenarios he was prepared for and the ones he knew he could never entirely account for. There was a good chance Heather and Iain would be busy tonight, though, and he'd probably gone as far as he could with this without losing something of value.

[Details in an hour.]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **_Reference:_** I'm letting Aiden quote himself, from the cinematic trailer.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Note:** I've restored the sex scene in the previous chapter to its original length and consequently upped the rating to M. It's not that much more raunchy, though, Have fun!
> 
> **Author's Note:** I've got to apologise if I failed to reply to a review or comment. My main computer is broken since early April and I'm only sporadically online. That's also why I took so long to get this chapter out. The epilogue shouldn't take so long, hopefully.

In the early hours of the morning — or late hours of the night — Iain drifted in and out of sleep, nearly waking up fully when Heather kissed him on the mouth. She drew back just in time and Iain dropped back into sleep, mollified.

The second time he woke, it was less gentle and more effective. Something shattered loudly, followed by lower rumbles and by the time he sat up abruptly, heavily armed SWAT troops dispersed into the bedroom. Two positioned themselves on either side of the bed, barrels pointed at him so steadily he thought he could spot the bullet lodged at their ends. Blinking in confusion and dawning realisation, he lifted his bare hands up very slowly. He stole a glance at his phone on the table by the bed, but its screen was perfectly black.

He heard the coordination shouts of the SWAT team as they announced they'd secured the condo. Iain's glanced traced over the empty side of the bed, where Heather had been and where she wasn't anymore because…

A tall man walked in, bulletproof vest over his immaculate suit, middle-aged and gaunt, sharp dark eyes taking everything in without giving any indication of his thoughts. He strode towards the bed with an underhanded swagger and held out a sheet of paper towards Iain.

"Mr Iain Darcy," Ramsey said calmly. "You are charged with violating the RICO act and are now under arrest. I'm sure none of this will come as a surprise."

Iain hesitated pointedly and Ramsey waved an irritated hand at the two SWAT members on either side of the bed, who lowered their guns a fraction and drew back half an inch. Iain assumed he'd be safe to reach for the paper and look over it for only a moment, than back up at Ramsey.

"Not reading my rights?" he asked.

"Why? Do you plan to confess fully?" Ramsey asked.

"I plan to put on a pair of pants," Iain muttered. "Unless you all are very eager to see a real cock for a change."

As expected, neither Ramsey nor any of the SWAT members seemed particularly impressed by this, but Iain wasn't in the mood to care what either of them found amusing or not.

"Wouldn't want to embarrass you," Ramsey said with he same stiff composure he'd used before. He gestured again and the two SWAT members gave Iain some space and even a curt nod to indicate he was allowed to move without being riddled with holes. Iain was careful to move slowly, though, so as not to provoke them.

While he dressed in slow motion and with trying to show his hands at all times, Ramsey had walked a little away and pulled out his phone. Judging by the movements of his fingers, he'd typed a short message and didn't receive a reply. Ramsey looked back at Iain, regarded him for a long moment, then said, "I'm sure you have a lot of questions."

Iain watched him, a little too rattled to match Ramsey's blasé attitude, but still able to cover for it with flippancy. "I'm sure you have only one."

Ramsey glanced down at the phone again, a slight frown appeared.

"Turn on the TV," Ramsey said and it took a little time until Iain realised the order had been directed at him. He briefly thought if he could use it as a pretext to go for his phone, maybe steal a look at missed calls and messages to help him gauge what really was going on.

Instead, he picked up the remote from the glass table by the TV screen and switched it on. He didn't know what Ramsey had in mind, but the TV was turned to WKZ News and his mind immediately picked Heather's name out of the news ticker.

He only caught the last part of what the host was saying.

_"…appeared on SystemLeaks only a few minutes ago and could not yet be verified. Please be aware that some viewers might find the footage disturbing."_

The screen cut to a surveillance video, which Iain placed immediately. The dock outside Grisha's villa, with the Russian's yacht moored on one side and the speedboat Heather had used to get there for her final confrontation with him. Already knowing where it would go, Iain watched himself and Heather, Gonzalez and Bell with Evgeni between them. The yacht lit up, Iain barely remembered that, he'd been too focussed on Grisha and his men at the time.

Modern ctOS' sound was as pristine as its footage, there was no doubt who the people on that dock were, even before Profiler was run. Iain heard Heather's voice, declaring herself leader of the Chicago South Club as if Pearce had scripted the damning line for her for just this occasion.

"You know that's fake, right?" Iain asked with every appearance of nonchalance, casually looking away from the screen, too boring to hold his interest.

Ramsey was looking down on his phone again and took a longer moment before he responded.

"Possibly," he agreed with thin sarcasm. "But I wonder if it has anything to do with why your girlfriend isn't here."

He tapped his finger on his phone, held it to his ear and turned away as he waited for the call to connect.

Iain looked back to the screen, watched the scene play out as he remembered with Heather shooting Evgeni as a show of strength. He could only guess at the size of the operation, but the prominent signs of FBI on the SWAT team hadn't escaped him. So, he guessed the information about the joint _training_ exercise had been untrue, no doubt planted to throw him off the scent. If they had teamed up with CPD, they had the manpower to sweep through the city, hitting every node in the Chicago South Club infrastructure, leaving them no time to even sent out any warning towards anyone.

"She's not here," Ramsey was saying on the phone, sounding quite a bit more irritated than he'd been willing to show towards Iain directly. "Well, _find_ her. I'm not… Hey? Are you still there?"

"The vigilante everything you thought he'd be?" Iain asked as Ramsey lowered the phone and swivelled back towards Iain. A small ripple of surprise crossed the state attorney's face, revealing the truth of it. It wasn't a hard guess to make, only Pearce would be able to infiltrate their network on this scale, not least of all because Heather had given him — one step at the time — full access to it. Somehow, the thought of having been _right_ about Pearce all along didn't quite feel as great as he'd hoped it would.

"His time will run out eventually," Ramsey said, paused for a moment. "She left you behind, you know."

Iain only shrugged, arched a brow and held out his hands mockingly. "Aren't you going to cuff me? I want to make a few front covers myself."

* * *

Pearce ignored the first two bouts of buzzing from his phone that announced Ramsey's texts.He had enough on his plate without holding the EADA's hand through arresting Iain. What he needed was to figure out where Heather was. And why she was gone in the first place.

The most obvious answer was that there had been a leak within SWAT he hadn't been able to find. They tended to be well-paid which, unfortunately, didn't preclude any of them having some extra expensive vice. The joint training story had been flimsy to start with, but he'd hoped Heather and the Club had too much to do to look deeper into it.

Except, something — of someone — had tipped her off. He watched the video from Heather's condo as it wound back. He _knew_ she'd been there with Iain starting late in the evening. The video jumped and, frowning, he hit pause, but couldn't quite make sense of the black blur across the image. He wound back slower and watched as some piece of clothing rearranged itself across the TV camera. Heather wasn't stupid, he had a feeling she kept the TV camera in her bedroom to give anyone snooping the impression they got her, there was no other surveillance Pearce could scour. Heather's phone had been turned off, but he'd seen it on the bedside table, which meant she hadn't risked taking it with her.

His phone buzzed again, this time announcing an incoming call. Distractedly, he picked up and said, "Yeah?"

_"She's not here."_

"I know," Pearce grunted.

_"Well,_ find _her. I…"_

Pearce hung up and silenced any calls and texts from Ramsey. He could follow the EADA's actions via the CPD and the FBI's local network logs. It'd give him enough of an idea of what they were doing. He'd know when to interfere.

Surveillance in the rest of Heather's condo was minimal, too, and he spotted her on none of the feeds. She must have rigged the system very carefully, to allow her to make an exit without being seen. The camera in the elevator was switched off and the feed from the parking garage underground was blacked, perhaps painted over.

It didn't mean she was nowhere in ctOS, sooner or later she'd have to leave the immediate area of her control and her influence even on corrupt Blume employees was limited. CPD would have overridden those privileges anyway, for the duration of the raids.

The FBI SWAT units were conducting simultaneous raids all across the city, their course of action dictated by the information Pearce had gathered and the access routes into phones and networks he'd been hoarding these past few weeks. It should give the authorities everything they needed to pin down every significant Club member. There simply wouldn't be anyone left who could covertly destroy evidence before they were found out.

But somehow, Heather had known it would happen and when. She had tried to set him up, Pearce thought. By giving him a night when he had good reason to believe she'd be distracted. She couldn't have known about Ramsey's badgering him for when to finally move, but if she'd been suspicious of the Feds' presence in the city, she could have made a reasonable guess. Running it through his head, Pearce suspected he'd have timed it similarly, which was why he'd given in to Ramsey in the first place.

He summoned the logs and went through the lists of people with warrants, focussed on the ones still missing from the list. Gonzalez was down, he'd been picked off in the lobby of Heather's high-rise, tried to fight and got a bullet for his trouble. He might even live, though probably not walk. Other bodyguards who Heather trusted were all down, too, some with, most without a fight. Denise was in custody.

Lucas D'Souza had a read warning blinking. He was still at large. Checking the footage and ctOS logs, it seemed like he'd rigged his place with explosives and blown them, making his escape through some secret passage in the converted factory.

For a moment, Pearce contemplated the scenario, giving a little appreciative whistle. He hadn't thought the hacker had the balls for this kind of thing. However, even planned out, it was a panic reaction, almost certainly not part of Heather's planned exit strategy… Unless, she knew Pearce would think exactly that.

Impossible to be sure about it, either way. He put a trace on D'Souza through ctOS nodes under his control, though with access to the _full_ network, chances were good the FBI would pick him up before Pearce.

He checked Heather against Profiler, but it still ID'd her correctly, so if she showed her face to ctOS, as she inevitable must, she'd be caught. There was some leeway with using masks and shades, but Profiler's facial recognition worked around these things more often than not. She'd need a scrambler like Pearce's to truly hide herself.

The scrambler wasn't a complicated piece of software, all one needed was an understanding of how it worked, access to ctOS and a little patience to figure out how to get the scrambling signal to embed via the camera's own firmware. Heather couldn't do it herself, D'Souza though…

He was about to check D'Souza's system via the backdoor he'd installed while he was there, when he realised that it didn't actually matter and it almost certainly wouldn't help track Heather _right now._ He couldn't dismantle the layer of protection she had from ctOS remotely like that, even if he knew exactly what D'Souza had done. If it was a scrambler, or something similar, he'd need access to the portable device it was running on to jam or switch it off.

His phone buzzed, edging into his lines of thought and his first, instinctual reaction was annoyance. But a glance over the phone told him the call came from an unknown, blocked number, one his network had failed to resolve automatically.

He put it on speaker, then picked up.

"Yes?"

_"Aiden,"_ Heather's voice came on, oddly demure. She was somewhere public, he could tell from the low background noise. A mall? Train station, maybe. Could be an airport, too.

"Where the hell are you?" Pearce snarled. "It's all going to hell."

She laughed, but he didn't think it was because his acting had been that bad.

_"I know."_

He'd put his programmes to work, resolving the number and beginning to trace it. The masking looked vaguely familiar, a little like the Russians', but he'd known Heather had people look into recreating it.

"Why are you calling?" he asked, dropping the pretence. "You know what'll happen."

While talking, he quickly armed himself, then took the phone with him as he left, leaving the more powerful computers to do their work. He hurried outside and climbed into the Vespid parked in the shadow of the expressway running along above.

_"You'll try to determine my location,"_ she said evenly. _"Try, being the relevant term."_ She paused, then continued, _"But I'm wondering…"_

"Wondering what?"

Commuter traffic was already beginning to clog up the streets, making it difficult even for him to navigate through them.

_"I know you came to me to do this,"_ she said. _"Bratva must have been such a gift to you. It gave you your in, one I'd buy and even if I didn't, you knew I couldn't refuse. The Club was already weak and I gave you inside information you'd have needed decades to gather on your own."_

"Wondering what?" he asked again, his attention on her rather than the moving parts of the traffic. The familiar grumbling of the car the only other sound against the backbone of honking and distant sirens.

_"If I ever actually tempted you,"_ she finished.

Without an actual lock on her location, picking a direction was difficult, he ran the risk of going entirely the wrong way, but he was heading towards Midway. Heather had the means to easily book passage on a cargo ship, but the noises didn't really match. Not that many people around a cargo port. Left the train as alternative option, if she wanted to clear the city quickly, because she was audibly not in a car or anywhere near car traffic.

"No," he said, the monosyllable scratching his throat on the way.

_"Then why did you wait so long?"_

He made a pointed effort to relax his hands on the wheel, weaving the car back into its proper lane to someone angrily honking at him as he cut them off. The traffic lights on the crossroads he was heading for switched abruptly back to green when he approached while all other lanes remained on red, giving him the space to pick up speed as he veered around the corner and a stretch of open road just behind it.

"I didn't," he said. "It's a lot of planning."

_"And yet, the FBI has been in the city for weeks. It makes no sense to bring them in too early,"_ she said. _"There could be rumours, because someone talks too much. That was a risk. I think you pushed the date back, not because you needed time to plan. I've seen you plan under pressure, it doesn't take weeks."_

"Well, maybe you don't know me."

The call seemed to have been routed through every ctOS centre in Chicago, but used no outside nodes to bounce off of, which gave him an advantage because some of them were already working for him.

_"Or maybe there are sides of you you don't like to acknowledge. Believe what you will, but you did make the Club stronger while you were with us. I'm sure you ran interference, too, but when you didn't, that made a difference to us."_

"That's how you make lies work."

Heather made a dismissive sound. _"The lie, wrapped in the truth? Or the other way around after all? It's more than a year since you threatened to kill me, and I'm still alive."_

His ctOS hacks did their best to reroute traffic away from him, but even so, he had to slow down more the closer he got to Midway. His phone's original travel time estimate had shrunk from more than half an hour to barely fifteen minutes. Now all Heather needed to do was be there in the first place.

"How did you know when to cut and run?" he asked. "If you're so sure of me, running's the worst thing to do."

_"I…"_ she stopped, seemed unsure what to say for the first time in the conversation. _"Do you remember what you told me last year? You said I was an outsider and I'd played this for as long as I could. You said it was time."_

"That's not an answer."

_"And you think I owe you one?"_

"Isn't that why you called?"

She chuckled, but it was an almost self-depreciating sound. _"I knew it was time because… I can't tell. I don't know. Just a feeling. It felt… it felt like it couldn't last. You wouldn't stop looking into Dongle's disappearance. I couldn't be sure there were no traces left."_

"You killed him?"

_"No, Bell did, but it's just the same. I'm sorry about that, Dongle didn't deserve it, but I couldn't risk him spilling to you or to Ramsey."_

Dongle _might_ have the skill to copy the Russians' masking signal and combine it with a scrambler in some way. He mostly did database manipulation and old-school forgery, but he was — had been — an adaptable service provider.

Pearce clenched his jaw until he felt the tension running to his temples, then relaxed again, focussing on the traffic more then he needed to, while there was a question he wanted to ask, but didn't want her to know about.

_"I gave you an opening,"_ she said, answering his unspoken question anyway. _"I broke it off with you because it was the easiest way to… advertise something might change between us. It was to prompt you, to make a move. If you hadn't, today would be no different. I'd have lost nothing. I've seen the video, I had a feeling you'd keep a recording."_

Another pause. _"I do have one of my own, but, I think I'll just keep that between you and me."_

"Don't worry about me."

This made her laugh again. Pearce took his gaze down when his phone announced caller location had been pinpointed in Midway's main terminal. He stepped on the gas a little more, hung on the tail of the car in front of him then pushed into the tiny gap on the left. The driver he cut off gave him the finger, but braked anyway.

_"I still have to thank you,"_ Heather said. _"If you hadn't given me that speech a year ago, I might have held on to the Club. Told myself I could keep it together. It's hard to remember that there are other options."_

Midway came into view and Pearce picked the taxi lane that lead right to the front entrance. His phone blinked a warning when he left normal ctOS and went into the airport's sphere. For security reasons, the airport was kept on mostly its own grit. It connected to ctOS, but it was wrapped in an extra layer of protection which he needed different rights to access and he didn't have time to hack in now. He pushed the thought aside, surface access would have to do.

"You think I can't find you?"

_"Find me, follow me, kill me?"_ she said, bemusedly. _"The shot you didn't take for years? I'm not too worried about that."_

He yanked the wheel so his car made a sharp, half-circle around a slower going car, then swerved back ahead of it. The main terminal came in sight.

_"I'm afraid it's time to go,"_ she said. _"Be careful. I'm your object lesson."_

She hung up, but it didn't matter, because he knew where she was now. He trailed his gaze over the information his phone spewed out, making sure nothing stood out as obviously wrong. He stopped the car and got out, ignored the bustle around him. They'd tow the car in only a few minutes, but he could always take another on the way home.

His phone gave another warning about his limited access, told him he was only able to hack into some of the surveillance cameras and most other systems — fire alarm, sprinklers, electric net — were turned off.

He strode through the terminal, people milling about him, the rhythm of their movement perfectly in accord with his expectation. His illegal parking outside had caused a small ripple, but he was already leaving it behind and the security personnel he spotted paid him no more heed than they did anyone else, even with the clearly visible gun under his arm.

He pulled up a map of the airport to orient himself, tagging possible escape routes only cursory. There was a lot of open space here, too many people getting in the way, serving as cover or camouflage.

The trace had last connected to a local ctOS node and the phone it attached to was located — he looked up from his phone — the ladies' restroom. Could be the other restroom, too, the system wasn't that precise, but he could check both easily enough.

He pushed into the restroom and a woman, just coming out, startled in front of him.

"Hey, where are you going?" she demanded sharply, then blinked, blushed and glanced away. "I mean, it's none of my business, I'm, uh… sorry."

She hurried past him, trailing Pearce's gaze as the door fell closed behind her, he noted the latch on top of the door that'd lock it.

He took another step into the restroom, looked along the stalls, most doors were open. He briefly dropped down to check, but none of the other stalls were occupied. He slowly turned on one heel, surveying the room once more, feeling the scowl dig into his features. With two long strides, he went to the plastic waste container, picked it up and emptied it. Balled up paper towels spread out over the floor, food wrappers and other handbag debris. An old flip-phone clattered louder than the rest and he swiped it up and opened it. Its monochrome screen came on.

The door opened and a young woman walked in, took a double take at his presence, then looked around the trash strewn on the floor, bent him a sympathetic smile and said, "Don't worry about it."

He wasn't quite sure what she thought he was doing there, but he paid her no attention, she wasn't going to cause trouble, which was good enough. She walked past him to lean towards the mirror by the sink, undid her hair and began to reassemble it, sometimes stealing a look at him through the mirror.

Even without flicking through the phone's limited menus, he already knew that it had been set up as a decoy, foiling his trace. He already had a few theories about it, but he'd need to dive deeper into the phone's specs and software to figure it out. With any luck, he'd learn something new from it, too. D'Souza hadn't seemed able to improvise something on that scale, or with this type of tech.

The old phone in his hand rang, thin, shrilling sound of thirty years ago. In blocky font, the phone spelt out Heather's first name.

"You won, congratulations," he said after he'd picked it up.

_"No, I didn't,"_ Heather said, voice laced with something he thought might be close to melancholy. _"Whatever you think, it's going to be tough for me. I have money and I have enemies, but I have no friends left."_

"Not even Bell?"

For some reason, she hesitated before she answered. _"He couldn't come, unfortunately, but he's raw talent. I'm not surprised you saw it, too. You must have had that, in the beginning. Please, I asked and you lied. I did tempt you, didn't I?"_

For just a moment, the insidious vulnerability coming through her tone as she'd sketched out her situation almost made him take her seriously. Consider giving her an answer, a true one, because something in this conversation seemed to demand it.

And everything about that constellation was wrong. At the core of it, the conversation was meaningless, wasting her time and his on it, now that everything was done. Heather wasn't the kind of woman who needed anyone to understand her reasons to make them worthwhile.

She was stalling, keeping him pinned in this place with just one door.

_"Aiden? Are you still there?"_

He only grunted and scrolled through his own phone, found a camera outside he had access to and saw what he'd suspected was there already. Airport security had just started clearing people away from the restroom door, other airport employees were beginning to herd the people outside or away while the security people built a half circle of riot shields.

"All for me?" he asked sarcastically. "How thoughtful. And I thought you liked me."

Heather laughed, instantly recognising what he was referring to.

_"It's been good,"_ she said, laughter still in her voice. _"But now it's time to end it."_

Heather hung up and he quickly put the phone away. Keeping an eye on the camera feed from outside, he quickly stepped in close to the woman by the mirror. Profiler caught her face and ID'd her: _(Janna Ali, 24, lifeguard, booked surf holiday on Hawaii)_

He stashed his phone, picked her arm on her back as he pulled her away, gave her no time to muster a defence other than a surprised yelp. He pressed his gun into the soft skin below her chin.

"Stay calm," he said lowly. "Nothing bad will happen."

He dragged her to the door and said, "Open."

She tensed against him, lithely muscled body, but from her profile he guessed she was very fit, but without any combat experience. She did as she was told.

"I have a hostage!" Pearce shouted at the security guards outside. "If you come inside, she dies first!"

He gave them no time to decide against that request, dragged her back, kicked the door closed. He shuffled the woman back roughly, so she stumbled a few steps. He snapped the latch closed. It'd buy him half a second's warning, not enough to make it count.

"Stay there," he told Janna as she straightened and eyed him warily, gaze darting around the room. She seemed stuck between fear and anger.

He kept her in his field of vision as he put his phone back to his ear, waited a moment and ran out of patience, looked back at it, swiped his thumb to force a connection.

"Ramsey," he said sharply, loud enough to be heard even if Ramsey didn't have his phone by his ear.

_"Did you find…?"_

"I'm cornered at Midway, call back security right now."

Ramsey was a smart guy, he picked up on things quickly and managed to operate well with limited information.

_"I can't do that. I don't have the authority…"_

"I don't care," Pearce snapped. "You don't do it, it'll be a bloodbath. And you do it right now."

It'd be a short one, too, but Ramsey didn't need to know that.

_"Look,"_ Ramsey said, striking a reasonable balance between hurried and reasonable. _"All I can give you is that SWAT is busy. CPD is busy helping them. Airport security is on their own."_

In this climate, it was just a question of time until someone _thought_ the words 'terrorist attack' and 'airport' loud enough for this to blow up. Midway's security personnel weren't anything to sneeze at no matter how you looked at it.

"You owe me," Pearce hissed, but he already knew that angle wasn't going to pay off. He looked around the room, went down the row of stalls, looking for some other exit.

_"I'm sorry,"_ Ramsey said. _"Perhaps it's time to turn yourself in."_

Pearce simply cut the connection, checked outside that nothing more had happened. He guessed security wouldn't move on him until they'd cleared the terminal, but it was already looking pretty empty.

"I…" Janna started.

He glanced up from the phone, where he was looking for a blueprint, hoping to find some other exit.

"Don't worry," he said to her, knowing he wasn't going to be very trustworthy.

"You said bloodbath…" her voice cut out and she narrowed her eyes, clearly annoyed at the tears threatening to roll down.

"Don't worry," he said again, checked outside, then fixed the woman. She wavered in an effort not to flinch away.

He said, "Go in there," pointing at the last stall in the row. "Close the door."

She seemed confused by the order, but didn't argue, just hurried away. In time, maybe she'd figure out he'd removed her from the direct line of fire. In no way was it possible to force his way out of there with a hostage. He didn't have anything to negotiate with other than the woman, he was a too high-value target for it. Sooner or later, the problem would be handed up for enough for someone to decide the random girl caught in the crossfire was tragic but unavoidable.

The blueprints, at least, explained why Heather wanted him in the ladies' restroom. The men's would've had access to a storage closet behind a door he probably could've forced through, but the women's was solid all way around. There was some air vents going on waist height, he saw the grill next to the sink, but it was far too small to squeeze through.

He leaved through the blueprints, wasting a few precious seconds on the slow acceptance that there wasn't going to be a way out, when something caught his eye on the plans.

The outside was nearly cleared now and airport security had ramped up on personnel and barricades. There was still some milling about at the back, though, maybe they had determined to wait for the police before they made a move, which would definitely be an advantage.

He looked up and scanned the ceiling, large, slightly yellowed ceiling tiles. It was too high to reach so he levered himself up on the toilet stalls, then reached out with his gun to give the tiles a few slaps. One corner gave in and he kept punching at it until the tile came loose and thudded to the floor.

He leaned forward, used his phone to light into the opening, frowning. Not a whole lot of space, either, no guarantee the ceiling would even carry his weight and he really hoped none of those pipes were hot, because he was going to be in close contact with them.

"Janna," he said, watched her look up at him wide-eyed.

"Count to five-hundred, then you leave," he said. "Open the door _slowly_ and stick your hands out first. Shout who you are. Got that?"

"Yeah, yeah, absolutely," she nodded, not quite sure if she was allowed to be relieved just yet. She cleared her throat and started counting quietly.

"Louder," he said sharply. "I want to hear you."

She flinched, but started again, this time raising her voice.

Without a good foothold and angling himself away from the top of the stalls, it wasn't easy to haul himself into the narrow space above the ceiling. The tiles were affixed to a thin metal grid which couldn't quite decide if it wanted to bent when he put weight on it or not, but he figured if he distributed his weight, it'd hold him. Dust swirled up around him as he pulled himself forward inch by inch. A heat source brushed past his head, but he had enough room to stay away from it. He suppressed a cough in the dry air, listened to Janna's counting, then twisted until he could catch a glimpse behind him. He'd cleared the entrance by about a yard.

"Two-hundred-seventy-four… two-hundred-seventy-five… two-hundred… uh… two-hundred-seventy- _six, fuck…_ two-hundred-seventy…seven…"

Carefully, he manoeuvred back around again, edged his phone upward and accessed the cameras outside again. The terminal was cleared of civilians by then and the security personnel had reached some semblance of order. Profiler ran over the people, quickly identified two men and a women as security managers. As he watched, one of the men nodded and hurried away, probably to oversee security measures elsewhere. The remaining two continued to talk among themselves.

"…four-hundred and twenty…"

They all carried radios tagged to their shoulders, but they were tapped into the Airport network, protected by several layers he had no time to break through. He scanned for unprotected smart devices instead and the list scrolling over his screen looked much more promising. Some of the devices were too far away to be of any use, but he found someone's phone in the lineup outside and turned its microphone on, but kept the volume turned as low as possible.

"…four-hundred-ninety-eight… four-hundred-ninety-nine… uh… five-hundred…"

Janna stopped and for a moment nothing happened, then the stall door swung open and she walked through the restroom.

"Hello?" she called. "I'm… I'm Janna! Janna Ali! I'm the hostage! Please don't shoot!"

Pearce watched the line-up of security personnel tense behind their barricades, guns ready and used the perfect display to assess their armament. Mostly hand-guns, but about a third of them had assault rifles and their uniforms bulged with the outlines of body armour.

On the small screen, Pearce watched the security people hesitate until the male security manager realised what was happening.

"Get her," he snapped, the audio muffled and distant. Two security guards advanced toward the door, one gripped Janna's extended arm and dragged her away to the side and out of view. Following another order by the manager, five other guards detached themselves from the barricades and, guns trained forward, advanced on the door. It had swung closed again behind Janna.

Pearce flipped through a few other camera angles — caught sight of Janna being shepherded further away with the female manager — but found none that'd give him a good look inside the restroom itself. He'd have to rely on his hearing and instincts for that.

The door banged open and Pearce counted three guards filing inside. Their entire demeanour was military and the profiles he'd seen confirmed for all the heavies and some of their colleagues as well.

Forcing himself to breath slowly rather than try to hold it — and reveal himself by a cough — Pearce waited. The guards filed into the restroom, checked the stalls and corners, called to each other short and precise.

"All clear!" one of them shouted.

"Hole in the roof," his comrade announced and Pearce watched the news be relied up the chain and to the guys outside. After a moment's hesitation, the security manager walked over, but stopped in the doorway, peering in uncertainly.

"Can't get a good look," the first guard said. "You want me to drill shoot a round in the ceiling and see if something squeals?"

Pearce couldn't see the security managers face, had no way to gauge how much appeal the idea held to this particular man in this particular situation. A round from an assault rifle would go through the ceiling tiles likes paper, shred everything between it and probably the next floor or so. Despite his best attempts, Pearce's breath caught, waiting as the seconds stretched seemingly into infinity.

"Are you stupid?" the manager demanded, this close, he sounded like someone out of his depth and trying hard not to let it show. "I don't want any gunfire if we can help it. It's bad enough already."

He dipped back outside. "Keep an eye on that ceiling. The rest of you, spread out and lock down the terminal tight. I'll find someone who can tell us where he could've gone."

Pearce allowed himself a slithering of relief, watching the guards spread out, leaving only a handful behind to guard the restroom and the door. Pearce had counted one guard leave to take position outside with another. Leaving two inside somewhere below him and the security manager who unfortunately hadn't gone far to call whoever he wanted to call.

Pearce shifted his weight slightly, slightly flexing cramped muscles in the confined space, using the camera feeds to check the location of the guards outside. He waited, he heard nothing from below and he needed some sound to make a guess of where the two men were, but nothing happened.

The security manager had wandered further away, Pearce had to switch the camera twice just to keep him in sight. Far enough away he would not immediately notice any commotion in the restroom. Pearce shifted back a little and the ceiling tile gave a Styrofoam whisper.

"You hear that?" someone said below. A little to the side of the opening, close to the hand drier where Pearce emptied the trash.

A pause, then, "I'm gonna take a look up there."

The other man, further back, towards where Pearce had climbed up to the stall walls to reach the ceiling. The two outside hadn't noticed the commotion, yet. Without access to their radios, Pearce couldn't cut them off, he'd only have the time it took the scattered guards to rush back to make his break.

The tiles gave him away, but he hoped it was too indistinct to give the men enough warning to brace themselves. Pearce had edged as far back as he could without being seen from below, he stole a quick look back to the opening, though it only told him where both guards were _not._ Had to be elsewhere, then. He pushed back, stole another look as more of the room came into view, adjusted himself and stamped his boot into a guard's face. He toppled back, caught himself awkwardly in the stall door that swung away with his impact.

His comrade had time to bring his gun up in the time it took Pearce to drop the rest of the way to the floor right in front of the guard. Pearce slapped the gun aside, brought the same hand up and into the side of the guard's face, caught his head as it was flung to the side, helped to smash it into the stainless steel of the hand drier.

"Fucking freeze you fuck!" the first guard shouted from behind. Pearce let the unconscious man slip from his fingers, tilted his head a little, but saw only a distant shadow from the corner of his eyes. He was too close, too. Without warning, Pearce ducked down, made a blind grip for the man's gun-arm over his shoulder to aim it away from him, punched his elbow into the man's — unfortunately armoured — stomach. Still keeping low, Pearce swung around, swiped the legs away under the man, but held on to his arm as the man staggered.

For a moment, the man's balance held, started to steady himself for a counter. Pearce stepped in close again and snapped his head down, forehead into the weak cartilage of the nose. The man crumpled. Pearce twisted his gun from him, twisted around just in time to see the two guards from outside file through the door. Already in motion, Pearce shot the first man in the head and the man right behind him had no time to change his trajectory enough, though with less time to aim, Pearce merely drilled two bullets into his vest. It probably saved his life, but at least it took him down.

Pearce dashed over them both through the door and ran to the right, where a large, round column provided momentary cover. The other guards had noticed what was going and were streaming back, just as Pearce had expected and the fact that shots had already been fired meant they were more likely to shoot now, too. With his back pressed against the concrete, he quickly glanced down at his phone, flipped through the list of unprotected phones he'd had before and send them a virus. Most of them were rejected.

The guards coming at him from the other directions were close enough to open fire. Pearce ducked away, blindly slid his thumb over the screen of his phone to send the detonation command to the infected phones. Someone screamed somewhere too far away to make a difference. This trick used to work a lot better…

Pearce shot at the advancing guards, made them dive for cover for a moment.

He needed to get out of the airport, out of this oversized open space with barely any cover. It had been stupid to come here, he _knew_ he didn't have proper access to an airport security network. He _knew_ he be left without most of his weapons if he went there. And he _knew_ Heather knew. It didn't even make sense to be at the airport at that time. It had been half an hour since Ramsey's call, more than an hour since the raids began. Heather hadn't even been in the city anymore. It's why she made her signal bounce around Chicago alone, so he never even considered she wasn't there.

He left the dubious cover of the column at a run, dove down behind the railing of an escalator, the row of them going up. He ran past behind them, skittered to a halt when he saw a guard into range ahead. Pearce fired at his legs, he stumbled and Pearce kept going.

He flattened his back against the next pillar, narrower than the first. The guards had slowed their advance, his taking so many of them down had made them cautious. He was fairly sure it was open season on him now, though. He leaned to the side and peered around the pillar. Twenty yards for the next one, closest to the glass front of the entrance.

A bullet ripped into the concrete and he snapped his head back just in time, curled around the pillar and crouched down on the other side, leaned out of cover, found a group of guards bunkered down behind riot shields. Further to the side, three more were beginning to flank him. He swung the gun around and fired at the one furthest out of cover. He had no body armour and the round ripped into his chest from the side.

Pearce's gun clicked empty and he tossed it away, drew his own and fired again. One headshot, but the third guard had managed to drop behind the escalator, whether injured or not Pearce couldn't be sure. In a flat run, he'd be right behind Pearce in a few seconds.

Before he made any stupid decision, one of the guards behind the riot shields screamed and cursed. Taking everyone's attention away from Pearce for just a second.

"The fuck?! Why's my phone hot?!?"

Pearce broke cover, fired a few scattered shots to make the others keep their heads down while he ran for the pillar. White-hot searing pain sliced along his side and knocked the breath from his lungs just as he reached it. He glanced down, hissing. A bullet had grazed him, cracked a rib by the feel of it, and cut open the inside of his right arm.

The glass front of the entrance lay just ahead. Outside was quiet, security must have pushed the people further away and locked down the streets. He spotted a few blue lights in the distance, a few cops coming to help out after all, probably setting up roadblocks at the periphery of the airport, where Pearce would be in control again.

He felt a growl lodged in his throat, transferred the gun to his left hand and fired several rounds into the glass doors. The bullets punctured the glass, millions of tiny cracks spread out around them, but the glass held. He kept firing, paused for only a second and whipped the gun around to drill a round into an advancing guard behind him, using the moment to map the space again for where the other guards were.

He put more bullets through the safety glass, knowing he was starting to run low on ammo. A shadow shifted into his perception, without hesitation, he brought the gun around and shot, almost only recognising the security guard retroactively, as he went down, whimpering from a stomach wound.

Too close, they were getting far too close and he had exactly five bullets left. He braced himself, fired two shots past the pillar to where the tightest cluster of guards was, ran out of cover with it. The safety glass was weakened, but he couldn't just crash through, needed to lean his shoulder into it as he turned back. This time, he took half a second more to aim, put a bullet in the head of each guard as a warning to their friends.

It bought him the tiny respite he needed to force through the door and out into the open. The parking lot spread out across the street from the terminal, but guards and cops from the roadblocks up and down the street had already been notified. He ran across the street and vaulted over the low wall leading into the parking lot. Between the parked cars, he had at least some cover and his pursuers lost sight of him.

Crouched low by a car, he scanned the lot for a suitable vehicle. Something sturdy enough to press through the thick of it with the roadblocks, fast enough to get him back into ctOS controlled space. The scan completed, he checked the mapping and send the unlock command to a brand-new Haikal Ri parked just two rows off from where he was. The car's lights flashed up and he told its park assist to get out of the spot and open the passenger door. The Haikal's engines hummed up and it slid smoothly from the spot, quick and efficient. By the time the passenger door opened, Pearce had already crossed the space and climbed in, send the accelerate command from his phone while he still scrambled into the driver's seat. The car automatically closed the door. It flashed a warning reminding him to put on a seat belt.

He hit the gas, swerved the Haikal sharply through the tight constrains of the parking lot, picking up speed to crash through the closes barrier. From one end of the roadblocks, the blue lights of a CPD cruiser advertised the cops' pursuit as he was heading for the other roadblock.

The cops there opened fire at his approach, making him duck low behind the wheel to avoid being hit. His phone gave a little sound as it reconnected with ctOS and Pearce's fingers flew back to the phone to heft it up, resting it in his sore right hand against the wheel.

From here, it was like choreography, so much instinct and reflex he guessed he could've done it half-dead and fully blind. A steam pipe ran under the street by the barricade and with just a touch on his screen, the valves closed and the pressure built to breaking point, emergencies all blocked by his hack. The pipe ruptured and split open the asphalt at the rear of the cruisers, the steams force picking them up and tossing them out of his way.

With just a flick of his wrist, he corrected the Haikal's course, made it avoid the worst of the steam blast, slowed down now after the first burst. After that, it was just a little water on his windshield and one last cruiser lagging far behind.

The airport lockdown and the roadblocks had caused the traffic to bank up everywhere, tightly packed, annoyed drivers and their cars in long, untidy rows. Easy for him to navigate around and through, letting loose random commands as he passed by. Park assist systems kicked in in cars, put them square on the road without warning, caused others to crush into the car before or behind them. And as a result, it made the cars' drivers and passenger spill out into the street.

The police cruiser kept pace for a surprisingly amount of time, but the denser the streets were, the deeper Pearce drove into the Loop, the further he left him behind until his phone announced the cops had called off the pursuit.

Pearce slowed down a little, drove into a parking lot and left the car for a Sonarus he found there. Blood was still soaking from the injury at his side and now that he was standing still, the ache made itself felt and him wary of every move that'd jar his ribcage.

He picked up the old cellphone Heather had used to lure him in, turned it in his fingers for a little while, considering. It'd be smart to keep the phone locked down until he got back at his computers, make sure he could run a proper trace on it and control or block any further nasty surprises it might contain.

Instead, he flipped it open and hit re-dial, listened to the tone as it rang for what felt like a too long time, contemplating all the reasons why it shouldn't even still connect.

_"Aiden,"_ Heather said.

"I got out."

She laughed, throating, tinkling sound. She took a breath to say something but he flipped the phone closed and tossed it aside before he heard it.


	8. Epilogue

EADA Phineas Ramsey sat on a park bench just inside Millennium Park. Night had fallen a few hours ago, but it was warm and pleasant, a soft wind coming in from the lake. For a little while, he watched a pair of joggers go by behind him, a couple of young people laughing together on another bench a little away from him. A middle-aged couple was out for a walk further along. Two young men and a women doing Tai Chi in the grass.

He was close enough to the street to watch the flow of traffic, but though it was still audible, its noise was muted here.

Ramsey's survey returned, just in time to watch Aiden Pearce stride along the sidewalk, casually disinterested pretence with his face cast down to his phone. The loose shirt he wore edged treacherously outward over the gun at his hip.

Pearce reached the bench and looked up, expression relaxed and pensive, gaze coming to rest on Ramsey. He made no attempt to sit down.

For the last few days, Ramsey had barely seen the outside of his office, of interrogation and conference rooms. They had hundreds of suspects in lockup and only limited time to get to all of them, most of them smart enough to lawyer up the instant they'd been taken. Forensics had moved in to secure crate upon crate — or terabyte upon terabyte — of evidence. They'd be at this for a long time to come, but for now, sitting there in Chicago, it was an odd thing to think that the Chicago South Club laid no claim anymore to these very streets. The turmoil was just picking up in non-Club territories, the Wards most of all, where other groups were just starting to figure out what their next, best moves could be.

Somewhere behind Ramsey, a camera drone dropped into the grass, a puppet with its strings cut.

Ramsey gave it a quick look, as if his own surprise at it puzzled him more than the occurrence itself.

"Never mind that," Pearce said.

And there was Pearce, too. The vigilante. Doing whatever he pleased, Club and gangs and ctOS notwithstanding. It was hard to ignore the advantage of having him as an asset, just as it was hard to ignore what the price would eventually turn out to be. Pearce certainly wasn't going to foot the bill, either, which was what set him apart in Ramsey's mind. Pearce wasn't well-intentioned and ill-guided. He was a very dangerous man, en par, in his own way, with anything the Club had ever been.

"I know this is a trap," Pearce said.

Ramsey studied the other man, took his time. "Would you be very disappointed if it's not?"

Pearce only shrugged, letting the silence speak for itself.

Ramsey took a little breath before he said, "I wanted to thank you. Personally."

"Can you make it stick this time?"

Ramsey waved a hand in the air vaguely. "Most of it. We're looking at _years,_ hundreds of suspects, much more than that in business entanglement, tax evasion schemes, shell companies. I'm sure there are one or two political scandals waiting to happen, too. But that's not what you care about, I think."

He nodded slowly when Pearce made not attempt to confirm the obvious.

Ramsey said, "The Chicago South Club, as we understand it, doesn't exist anymore. What we're dealing with now is a lot of cut-loose lower tier operations and the people who ran them. It's not like we've eradicated crime, or even organised crime, in the city. But… it's looking a little cleaner than it did a week ago."

"Except Heather Quinn got away."

"Except that," Ramsey pursed his lips. "I don't know what happened and what tipped her off. Perhaps you can enlighten me?"

"No."

"Where is she, by the way?"

"You're not looking for her?"

"So far, it's… inconclusive. Our strongest leads put her on the Maldives. Or in Jakarta. But corporation is a little slow with the authorities there."

Pearce chuckled a little. "Too exotic," he remarked, but didn't offer anything else and Ramsey didn't press him.

In Ramsey's estimate, dealing with Aiden Pearce on his terms was potentially more trouble than it was worth. The man guarded his secrets jealously, always engaged in some imaginary game of one-upmanship with the rest of the world. He'd been well-matched to Heather Quinn and perhaps the only truly surprising element in all of this was that they had neither joined with each other nor wholly destroyed each other.

"I got something for you," Pearce said, tilted his head a little towards the street in indication. A midnight blue sports-car drove slowly along it and as Ramsey got up and followed Pearce towards it, he saw that it was driverless, though a man was riding shotgun.

Ramsey frowned, not only because the image was still odd. When the car stopped, he saw that the man's mouth was taped shut, making it likely he was tied-up.

"Who is this?" Ramsey asked. He stopped on the sidewalk while Pearce stepped to the car and opened the door, yanked the young man out and onto his feet.

"Kevin Bell," Pearce introduced him, gave them man a little pat on the back which would've been friendly, had he not kept him tied-up in his car. "Used to work for Sentris, but found his dream job with Heather. He's quite the budding psychopath. I suggest you lock him up for a very long time."

"What do you mean?"

Pearce gave Ramsey a long look, close to incomprehension at being questioned like that.

"What I mean is that he's been fantasising about murder since he was kid and killed his neighbour's dog. When he was a teenager, one girl ditched him because he skinned her cat. There was also some incident with a roommate, I can't get access to. Paper files, you know. It seems Bell here enjoyed a little mindfuckery with the poor guy. Got him convinced Bell was going to kill him in his sleep and then eat him. Or something."

He gave Bell another friendly pat. "But, like I've said, I don't know what the files really say about it."

"That's…" Ramsey started and looked the man over again. He continued not to struggle against Pearce's grip, but not because he was intimidated. There was a harsh glare in his eyes and an odd restlessness in his bound hands. "… a story. I'll need evidence."

Pearce shrugged. "Heather hired him. He committed at least one murder for her, a forger called Dongle. I tracked the video for you. Bell is also the one responsible for the chaos at the airport."

"Oh?" Ramsey asked lightly. "I thought that was all you."

Pearce grated a laugh.

The shifting flow of pedestrians had washed more people closer to them and Ramsey watched as Pearce noticed it and a nearly imperceptible increase in tension somehow made his athletic body seem suddenly more threatening.

Ramsey caught himself glancing around at the other people as if looking for their support.

"I guess I should arrest him," Ramsey said. "Just to make sure. But… he doesn't seem that important. Still, I thank you for your help."

"He's scum," Pearce said. "But you're right, he doesn't matter."

Ramsey startled back when Pearce took a quick step forward and reached for Bell's thigh. Confused, Ramsey noticed the zip-tie resting around it and watched as Pearce pulled it tight. Bell flinched away under the sting and grunted. Without giving either of them any more time to process what was going on, Pearce pulled his gun, put it to the flesh of Bell's leg just under the line of the zip-tie.

All around them, the agents broke cover at the sight of Pearce's gun, rushing towards them, but Bell realised what was going on the moment before the vigilante pulled the trigger.

Bell's scream was muffled through the tape and Pearce caught him instead of letting him fall. Despite the makeshift constriction, a gush of blood welled out into a rapidly growing puddle.

Cursing, Ramsey dropped down by Bell's side, placed his hand over the gushing wound.

"He's just the distraction," Pearce said, holstered his gun and stepped back to the car. Fluidly, he climbed into the passenger seat, then slipped behind the wheel, flicking a thumb across the screen of his phone. The car closed its door, electric motor humming like a purring cat as it sped away. Immediately, police in their unmarked car were on him, cover blown wide open, they put up their sirens up as they shot down the street.

Pearce hit the brakes, brought his car around in a tight circle and shot down a narrow alleyway. The police car followed, but just as it passed the mouth of the alley, a ctOS box blew up. It was just a small explosion, but the police car went dark instantly and was brought to a stop against the wall, blocking the way.

The agents they'd placed on foot around the park arrived, already calling for an ambulance before Ramsey shouted at them to do so.

Ramsey looked away, down at the man who was bleeding out when, distantly, he heard the hard snapping of electricity a moment before the city block and the park dropped into darkness, turning the blood black.

* * *

Reclined in the upholstered chair, legs extended along the side of the table and crossed at the ankles. Aiden Pearce watched a grey, rainy dawn slither across the city of Zurich, Switzerland.

The wall of screens in front of him displayed various camera feeds, surveying the Millennium Point hi-rise he lived in as well as other areas of interest, though he wasn't paying attention. His network monitors spooled their ongoing results across another screen. Above, WKZ News was muted, currently occupied by a late night talk show concerning the overall effectiveness of law enforcement's fight against organised crime. Stereo speakers filled the room with loud, booming music.

Aiden bit down on a piece of spicy pork, reached out with the chopsticks and hit a key to change from the downtown waterfront panorama of the Kranich Hotel to an inside view of one of its modern suites.

The camera was part of the television's hardware and he doubted the hotel even knew it was there. They only had two rooms with hidden surveillance and the files he pulled from the television's cache indicated the camera hadn't been used after a factory-side functionality test. For the Kranich, their good name and reputation were going to get a bad hit once some other hacker came across the exploit and used it for their own purposes.

Ramsey hadn't been all wrong, Aiden had retraced all of Heather's steps since her escape and found she'd left from O'Hare — not Midway — on a flight to Toronto. She'd switched identities and flew on to Argentina and from there to Jakarta. Her little trip around the globe had left her, rather mundanely, in Switzerland, where Aiden had finally found her installed in the Kranich.

While Ramsey had the right idea about Heather, he was wrong if he thought she was going to put herself at the mercy of a government she couldn't influence with money alone. Switzerland seemed like a good idea, but Aiden couldn't claim to be an expert on financial crimes on that scale. He didn't know if she had the traction to stay or planned to move on.

He finished the Thai curry and set the box aside, drummed a little rhythm on the desk with the chopsticks before he put them down. He reached for the tall cup of coffee, then leaned back again, taking a sip.

The view from the camera encompassed the pastel-pale bedroom, cool in the light falling into the room from the wide windows. A little wind stirred the curtains into the edge of the display. On the bed, Heather slept mostly hidden under billowing blankets, only tangles of dark hair revealed the position of her head.

It was just after five in the morning in Zurich when Aiden switched on his own camera and relayed it to the television through the hotel's own wifi. It artefacted a little, but the transmission stabilised. He pulled his legs down, set the cup to the side and rested one hand on the keyboard in case he needed to cut the connection quickly, though he didn't expect to.

"Heather," he said, increasing the volume a little. "Wake up."

A tiny twitch ran through her. He had suspected she'd not be sleeping all that deeply, still feeling the heat on her back and his voice was recognisable enough. Just when he was about to speak up again, Heather stirred. She rolled onto her back and sat up, sleep-confusion lax in her face, half-covered by strands of hair. The strap of her top slipped loosely from her bare shoulder.

She needed the time it took to push her hand through her hair and out of her face to compose herself, face hardening into a dryly amused, flawless mask.

"Hello Aiden," she said. She pushed the blanket aside, leaned forward on her arms and swung her legs around, so she came to sit at the foot of the bed, silken pyjama trousers riding up her slender legs. She hung her arms loosely between her knees as she leaned towards the television, gaze briefly travelling across the frame and the area around it, trying to determine where the camera was hidden. When she found nothing, she resigned herself to stare at his image instead.

"Do you know why things happened the way they did?" she asked.

He merely shrugged. "Not my problem. It's done."

She chuckled, made an elegant gesture with her hand. "It's not, I'm still here."

"You think you're safe?" he asked, calm masking the dark implication of the question, knowing no artefacting would lessen it. "You think I can't find you?"

"Where are you, then?" Cool amusement firmly fixed in her expression. "Threatening me by proxy, you know it'll take a little more."

"Hmm," he made before he said, "Or I don't have to bother. Maybe it's enough to know where you are. Maybe give a tip to the authorities. Mess up your identities. Your bank accounts. I can ruin you, and I don't have to leave this chair to do it."

She didn't immediately give an answer, her eyes narrowed just slightly.

"Who knows?" he continued, voice pitched low and mesmerising. "All it'll take is one Bratva hitman with the right information. I hear some Club members slipped the net, too. I'm sure they'll have a few things to say to you, too."

A shiver in the corner of her mouth, in the instant before she shook her head.

"It sounds like you're bluffing," she said. "If this entire tragedy has proved anything, then that I do understand you much better than you understand yourself. And certainly better than you understand me. You can't trip me up like that. If you want me dead, you'll have to come and get me yourself."

She leaned forward a little more and her top fell a little further away. "That's what makes it interesting, doesn't it?"

It wouldn't have been too difficult to manufacture a false identity for himself, one that'd get him on a flight to Europe and there were enough connections he could make in the DarkNet to ensure he was supplied with weapons and other hardware once he touched down there. He'd even considered it, but Heather was right about one thing: She had predicted many of his moves ahead of time.

He matched her faint smile. "Let's make it more interesting. Let's say, I don't come for you now. Let's say I just watch you. Every camera you see, from now on, you'll never know if it's got me watching you."

He didn't need to hunt her across the globe at all as long as she still _thought_ he was. All he needed to do was create the illusion of pressure and let her mind run away with it, locked in a contest of will and cleverness with him in which, in truth, he was no longer participating in.

She didn't need to know he'd stopped playing. All he needed for her to go down was for her to make a mistake. That Bratva hitman wouldn't _need_ him to hand him the intel, all he'd need was Heather tripping up on her own. She was vulnerable now, without a power-base and a support network.

"I hope you enjoy the show," she said.

"Yeah," he said, chuckled a little. "I will. And it shouldn't worry you. You should start worrying when I'm no longer watching."

"And why's that?"

He watched her face, wondering if he just imagined the tiny cracks in her facade, the doubt chiselling away at her composure. It'd take a long time for the erosion to break her down and make her stumble. Maybe it was even worth the effort it'd need to actually watch her, as he'd said he would but had not, originally, intended to bother with.

He said, "Because that's when I'm coming to get you."


End file.
